Social media has long been an integral part of everyday life. Social media have developed into imposing networks that are no longer just dedicated to communicating with acquaintances. The distribution of content via the channels of social media has become a driving force in business, politics and society.

The high degree of networking, the generally endless availability of potential customers and the improved possibility of comprehensive brand presence have made social media the most interesting and promising medium for advertising and image campaigns. Anyone who wants to be successful today must not shy away from the possibilities of social media.

 Below you will find out why.

 Social media in facts and figures

A large part of the German population has a profile with at least one provider of social media. A study by the public broadcaster ARD and ZDF comes to the conclusion that in 2016 83.3 percent of the German population take online services. That’s 58 million people in numbers and almost 24 percent more than 10 years ago. The majority of daily use, according to the study, is accounted for by the group of 14-39 year-olds, while in people over the age of 60, only 35.9 percent are online daily. However, the trend is increasing among all age groups.

According to the statista website, about 30 million people are registered on Facebook in Germany, while the Instagram service has around 15 million German users. Statista also claims an overwhelming number of nearly 2.2 billion monthly Facebook users in January 2018. This means that almost one-third of the world’s population accesses the services of the social network at least once.

Whatsapp and Facebook still great, Instagram and Snapchat catching up The study by ARD and ZDF comes to a percentage of 58 percent for Whatsapp and 34 percent for Facebook (weekly use).

According to the study by ARD and ZDF internet users spend on average 2 hours and 29 minutes for online activities. Men use the internet for longer than women. Basically, the time spent on the Internet is steadily increasing. For the 14-19 year olds, the value is even 4 hours and 30 minutes. Again, the older the consumer, the less time he spends a day on the Internet.

forecast 

Accordingly, the media agency Zenith predicts an increase in social media spend of 72 percent between 2016 and 2019. This would account for 20 percent of Internet advertising, at 16 percent today. It is even assumed that advertising through social media by 2020 will have overtaken advertisements via newspapers. Advertising via social media will most likely become an indispensable part of marketing.

Even though Instagram has been claiming that such services generate fake like which are against its terms of services, and as per some sources they are continuing their operation.

“Fraudulent activity is bad for everyone. We have a strong incentive to prevent this kind of behaviour on Instagram and staff a number of teams to detect fraudulent activity and shut it down”, as per some reports from Buzzfeed. Most of the usage related cases mostly included the influencers getting extra likes and comments on a branded or sponsored post or even a video, which might appear as a viral post to the ordinary users.

Further as per BuzzFeed, it had bought Fuelgram’s service for the investigation related to a spin-off an account name “Viral Hippo” and it was easily able to get nearly 1,500 like on the dull posts like the above yellow square, another green square, the diagram of a human sinus etc. It was discovered that brands such as Walmart, Kroger, Aquaphor were among those being advertised and promoted in posts which were backed by Fuelgram’s army of bots.

It is worth noting a fact that Instagram also benefits from these bots, which might appear real to some users. Further, these apps add to engagement and activity numbers of the app and also make the app more appealing to younger brands.

OPINION: After years of warnings about being careful with your personal data online, people are finally waking up to how much tech companies know about them.

While Facebook has taken the brunt of the recent criticism, Google also has a vast amount of data about you.

Internet users do more than three billion searches on Google every day and all the data is kept and used to help them sell more ads.

READ MORE: It’s not just Facebook – companies from Trade Me to the bank use your data

While it’s easy to find out what data Google has on you, it’s hard to escape. Even if you delete your activity, the company still keeps some basic personal data.

And the more you use Google products, the more useful they become. For example, you can set a work and home address in Google Maps so when you search for a destination it can tell you how far it is from work or home. But if you do that you’re giving them key personal information which can also be used by other Google apps.

Also, Google’s suite of services makes it inconvenient to leave. Gmail, Maps, Docs, Chrome Sheets, and Drive are all great products, but get even better when used in conjunction with each other.

So what are your options?

First, take a look at what Google knows about you (visit myactivity.google.com) or download it (takeout.google.com). If you’re happy with it having that data then you can keep on using Google apps for free and in exchange allow it to track and keep your information.

The other option is to lock down some of the settings, for example blocking your location.

Your final option is to leave Google. You can delete all the data Google knows about you and start using other apps.

Start by using DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track you online. For navigating around town you could download the Navmii app, and maybe look at Firefox to replace Chrome as a web browser. Instead of Gmail, try Kolab Now or FastMail and for documents you could try Microsoft Office or Zoho Docs.

It takes a buffet of apps to replace Google, but it is possible to leave the company and stop it collecting and using your data.