Even before the COVID-19 pandemic the world was becoming increasingly connected online with an estimated 59 percent of the planet’s population or 4.57 billion people using the Internet. Those figures from Aril 2020 by visualcapitalist.com were published at the start of the public health crisis, which has certainly accelerated the worldwide digital move with people relying on their connected devices through lockdowns, remote work and online schooling.Cybersecurity Ventures predicts this trend will continue to ramp up with some six billion Internet users by 2022, an increase to 75 percent of the forecasted world population of 8 billion, and a whopping 7.5 billion online users by 2030, which would be 90 percent of the world’s projected population, six year or older.
What is Happening Online Every 60 Seconds
By the time you have read the first three paragraphs above, it took about 60 seconds, and in that minute an incredible amount of digital activity took place around the world as people worked, learned, played, entertained and connected via apps and the Internet. The scope of activity around the world is hard to wrap your mind around, but fortunately cloud software Domo recently released its “Data Never Sleeps” infographic which provides us with a glimpse of how much data is generated every minute around the globe. This is the 8.0 version of Domo’s research with eight updates in the last nine years. For insight into how our typical online behaviors have evolved over the past decade, Visual Capitalist does a nice comparison chart of every app and service featured by Domo in each of its “Data Never Sleeps” versions.
The Online Mainstays: Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube
Only three apps have been featured in all eight of the Data Never Sleeps infographics: Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. We learn that in 2020, every minute:
- Users post 347,222 stories on Instagram
- Twitter gains 319 new users
- Users upload 500 hours of video to YouTube
With just these three we can see changes since 2012 including the fact that eight years ago, users were uploading just 48 hours of videos per minute to YouTube, a number 10 times less than today .On Instagram, users were adding 3,600 photos per minute in 2012 and stories were not even a tool available to users as it was not added to the app until 2016. The number of stories posted per minute this year is nearly a hundred-fold increase over the photos being posted eight years ago. Quite clearly our sharing of visual content is increasing exponentially.
Hey, What Happened to …
Comparing the “Data Never Sleep” releases we can see how quickly some apps and services fall out of favor with the public. In 2012, Foursquare, Flickr, WordPress and Tumblr made their only appearances. Others from the earlier lists, such as Pinterest, Vine, Dropbox, Pandora, and Yelp have not made the cut since 2015.
The COVID-19 Affect
You will notice that “Data Never Sleeps 8.0” includes the addition of new brands and return of certain apps and services because of their value during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new brands added this year included:
- DoorDash: With many states shutting down indoor dining for a period, Americans have increasingly been ordering out, including 555 DoorDash meals every minute.
- Zoom: Overnight many businesses shifted to remote work, resulting in Zoom hosting 208,333 people per minute in meetings.
- Microsoft Teams: To get remote work done, people must collaborate, and Microsoft Team connects 52,083 users every minute.
For those returning to the list it was a snapshot of what we have been doing from home during the pandemic such as shopping (Amazon), watching movies (Netflix), listening to music (Spotfiy), looking for news (Reddit), keeping tabs on neighbors and friends (Facebook), group messaging loved ones (WhatsApp), and sadly in some cases, looking for a new job (LinkedIn). With the roll out of 5G and its promise of more bandwidth and a faster Internet we are sure to see new brands become a part of our daily lives. Contact PS Lightwave to see how we can help keep you connected every single minute of the day.
