Singularity in Internet trends

One of the peculiar things about the Internet and the technology ecosystem is the fact that the numbers and the percentages of the rest of the world always converges to the numbers of U.S. at some point. Maybe it is because the shifts in the technology, media and the Internet industries that happen in the U.S. are so strong that they create the exact same waves at other countries. In the beginning, the social media statistics of Turkey were very different than that of the U.S. Only people of ages 18-35 dominated the social media outlets, but today in Turkey there is an even higher usage.

Therefore the statistics from America are still important to predict the future in Turkey.

According to Business Insider, Facebook still skews significantly female. Women in the U.S. are more likely to use Facebook than men by about 10 percentage points, according to a 2013 survey of social network adoption.

Facebook remains the top social network for U.S. teens. Nearly half of teen Facebook users say they’re using the site more than last year, and Facebook has more daily teen users than any other social network.

That said, Instagram has edged out Facebook and Twitter in terms of prestige among young users. U.S. teens now describe Instagram as being the “most important,” while Facebook and Twitter lost ground on this measure, according to Piper Jaffray’s twice yearly teen survey. The survey also found that 83 percent of U.S. teens in wealthy households were on Instagram.

LinkedIn is actually more popular than Twitter among U.S. adults. LinkedIn’s core demographic is people aged between 30 and 49, i.e. those in the prime of their career-rising years. Not surprisingly, LinkedIn also has a pronounced skew toward well-educated users.

Twitter has begun to lean worryingly toward male users, whereas previously it was a more gender-balanced social network. Pew found that 22 percent of men use Twitter, while only 15 percent of women do.

YouTube reaches more adults aged 18 to 34 than any single cable TV network. Nearly half of the people in this age group visited YouTube between December 2013 and February 2014, according to Nielsen. It was rated by millennials as the top place to watch content, ahead of digital and TV properties like Facebook and ESPN.

Snapchat is the youngest social network of all. More than six out of 10 Snapchat users are in the 18-to-24 age group, compared to 28 percent of Instagram users, according to a survey by Informate.

If you look at the statistics of Turkey, you will see that they are almost identical. This is probably the reason why the successful business concepts in the U.S. work perfectly well in Turkey, too. However, I do think that Turkish entrepreneurs overdo it when it comes to copying American business strategies.

What do you think? Please do not hesitate to share your ideas as I will write about this the next week.