There is so much social media data out there, it is sometimes hard to parse the bad from the good. This is especially true with international data, which can be even harder to find and murkier to interpret. So where to turn? Through trial and error, I have hit upon a few tried and true sites with valuable data covering a global population. Here are 5 of my favorite free resources for international social media stats and data.
1. GlobalWebIndex - Global Web Index is a large pay data and research service, which boasts a survey panel of a staggering 18 million people. Even better, their blog offers great insights about social media and device use worldwide, for free. On the blog, they offer a "Chart of the Day" with an insightful snapshot from larger survey panels and reports. Below, we can see one such chart of the day, covering the global percentages of users following charities on social media.
2. Statista - Statista is good for some general statistics including a frequently updated list of the top social websites in different regions of the world and the current number of social media users - 2.95 billion at the time of this post. Statista itself does not obtain these statistics, but rather it is a clearinghouse for thousands of different sources, all visualized online through Tableau. You can search by topic to find the dataset which is most relevant to you (they have a huge variety). Here we can see the growth of Snapchat worldwide from 2014 through early 2017.
3. International Telecomms Union - This is an international governing body that provides statistics for telecommunication use and diffusion across the world, including information about mobile use and internet and computer access. The ICTEye allows you to compare statistics for different countries on the fly. While they do not publish or blog everyday, their end-of-year reports are particularly comprehensive.
4. Google's Consumer Barometer - This data set is pulled from online and in person questionnaires conducted in dozens of countries (with at least 1,000 people from each country). This survey covers mobile and internet access and use, and also gets deeper into attitudes toward social media use. You can explore the data through their "Graph Builder," by selecting the country of interest and cycling through the survey questions. It is also interesting to see the more behavioral data collected by Google, which is not typically covered by other surveys. Here, we can see Japanese consumers' responses to the question, "In the past month, did you go online via another device (e.g. computer, smartphone, tablet) while watching TV?" Google also offers trends over time and selected results grouped by theme.
5. We Are Social - We Are Social, an international new media focused research agency, culls information from some of these statistical sources, as wells as its own research, to put together a yearly comprehensive look at social media use worldwide. The findings from their Digital in 2017 report, published in conjunction with Hootsuite, are the most recent, and provide relevant insights into mobile use, social media use, and growth for different continents.
These websites are great resources for getting started with international social media and internet statistics, but this is by no means a comprehensive list. Do you have any favorite sources? Have you used the sources listed above?