Avi Schiffmann built the first coronavirus tracker in January 2020, before global organizations were aggregating cases. His dashboard proved essential. At WIRED25, he spoke with Megan Molteni about his plans to visualize candidates' positions for the 2020 election.

Elijah Allan-Blitz, VR Director, "The Messy Truth" in conversation with Angela Watercutter, WIRED.

Deonie Allen and Steve Allen, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Strathclyde, and Isla Meyers-Smith, global change ecologist, University of Edinburgh, in conversation with Matt Simon, WIRED.

Marc Rogers, Executive Director of Cybersecurity, Okta, Nate Warfield, Security Researcher, Microsoft and Ohad Zaidenberg, Founder and Executive, CTI League in conversation with Andy Greenberg, WIRED.

Maddie Stone, Security Researcher, Google Project Zero in conversation with Lily Hay Newman, WIRED.

Matt Mitchell Ford Foundation Tech Fellow and Founder, CryptoHarlem and Avi Schiffmann, Founder, The Coronavirus Tracker in conversation with Tom Simonite, WIRED.

Daniel Duane, WIRED contributor in conversation with Maria Streshinsky, Executive Editor, WIRED.

Celia Hodent, game UX strategist, in conversation with Melanie Cornwell

2020 was quite the year. Rachel Brosnahan and Natasha Leggero from "Yearly Departed" answer 50 of the most googled questions about the year 2020. What were some of the most googled questions from this tumultuous year? Was 2020 the hottest year on record? Was 2020 a recession? Who won the NBA Finals MVP? Rachel and Natasha answer all these questions (well, the best they can) and much more. Yearly Departed is out on Amazon 12/30

Social media has seeped into virtually all aspects of modern life. The vast social media universe collectively now holds 3.8 billion users, representing roughly 50% of the global population.

With an additional billion internet users projected to come online in the coming years, it’s possible that the social media universe could expand even further.

How the Networks Stack Up
To begin, let’s take a look at how social networks compare in terms of monthly active users (MAUs)—an industry metric widely used to gauge the success of these platforms.

Rank        Social Network        
#1        Facebook        
#2        WhatsApp        
#3        YouTube        
#4        Messenger        
#5        WeChat        
#6        Instagram        
#7        TikTok        
#8        QQ        
#9        Weibo        
#10        Qzone        
#11        Reddit

This year is likely the last one ever in which you can say that more than half the planet is not on social media.

Hootsuite just released a massive digital state of the union report. Some of the high-level findings:

5.2 billion of us now have phones globally
4.5 billion are connected to the internet
3.8 billion are active social media users

That 3.8 billion is 49% of the planet’s population, and it grew 9% over the past year.

Social Marketing Predictions for 2020-2025

Facebooks Path to Global Social Network Domination
From just a few thousand users in 2004 to 2.7 billion monthly active users (MAUs) in 2020, Facebook is by far the worlds largest social network.

But its massive global footprint did not grow overnight. While Facebook is the most popular social network in many countries, this traction didn’t happen overnight. And in other places, it still has not quite taken off.

To see Facebooks path to domination, we mapped each countrys most popular social network from 2008‒2020. The data was tabulated by Vincenzo Cosenza at Vincos.it by examining annual traffic data from Alexa and SimilarWeb.

Facebook Grows From the Americas to Southeast Asia
What famously started as Mark Zuckerbergs late-night intoxicated project called Facemash—a hot or not type website for students at Harvard University—soon evolved into the worlds predominant social network.

Before 2008, the social network landscape was populated by social network pioneers such as Myspace and Hi5. Googles Orkut was the most popular network in Brazil and India, and Friendster found a foothold in Southeast Asia.

But the Facebook wave came in earnest. By 2009, the social media giant took the title of most popular network for the bulk of the Americas, Europe, South Asia, and Oceania, with Orkut in Brazil being the sole holdout until 2011.

The coronavirus pandemic boosted social media usage around the world, as many people stayed home for weeks or months. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter are all gaining new users, though not all will benefit equally from 2020s growth.

How many internet users worldwide visit social platforms regularly?

An estimated 3.23 billion people, or 80.7% of internet users worldwide, will use a social network at least once per month in 2020.

Which countries have the largest populations of social media users?

China and India continue to rank first and second. As a result, Asia-Pacific remains the leading region, with 1.89 billion people using social networks in 2020.

Where will the most new users emerge?

China will post the most sizable increase, with 58.3 million more users than in 2019. India will gain 31.8 million social network users, while Brazil will add 10.0 million.

Trump was the most searched term among Chinese social media users last year, a report claimed, despite a severe public health crisis that brought the country to a standstill in the first quarter.

One of the most important things to learn is that misinformation and especially disinformation do not just affect us cognitively, they affect us emotionally. They often trigger an emotional response. They can make us outraged or angry, and self-righteous. And this can activate us to do something, like press the share button. Tuning in to our emotions, to how information makes us feel, can help us recognize when someone might be trying to manipulate us into becoming part of their disinformation campaign.

Dominic Thiem said the match was an important moment for him, allowing him to play before a packed house on the court where he had the biggest victory of his career.

VDE Verlag GmbH

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