Econsultancy have revealed their latest set of Social Media Stats, which certainly make for interesting reading.

Brands and social media (Cone)

78% of social media users interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools, an increase of 32% from 2008.
95% of new media users also believe companies or brands should not only have social media presence, while 89% believe that they should interact with their consumers in this space.

Social network UK market share (Experian Hitwise)

Twitter now receives more web traffic than MySpace in the UK, picking up 1 in every 400 UK internet visits in August, ranking as the 27th most visited website in the UK, one position above MySpace.
Twitter claimed 2.21% of UK visits to social networks, though since this only measures direct visits to the Twitter website and not the various Twitter clients, it may underestimate the real numbers.
Facebook was number one, with 47.5%, followed by YouTube on 16.63%, and Bebo on 4.26%.

Social media and customer experience (Tealeaf via Econsultancy)

Customers who experience problems when shopping online are talking about it on social media sites; 13% this year compared with 8% in 2008.
51% of respondents saying that social media has influenced their online transactions. 75% said their choice of retailer was influenced by what they read on social media sites, while 56% avoided a particular company after reading a bad review.

Advertising on social networks (comScore)

Social networks accounted for 13.8bn display ad impressions in August 2009, which is more than 25% of all display ads viewed online.
The telecommunications, retail and banking sectors were the biggest advertisers on social networks, in that order.

The recent social media stats were taken from a range of sources, including Econsultancy’s Social Media Statistics document, which forms part of the Internet Statistics Compendium, and other reports.

Source: Econsultancy