As I was putting together my presentation for Media Women of South Carolina, I updated the number of users on each of the social media sites I was going to discuss. I use social media every day and find the various platforms to be powerful communications tools. I had no idea just how powerful their reach is, though, until I saw the comparisons.

In April 2010, Facebook had 350 million active users worldwide. If Facebook were a country, it would have been the fourth largest country in the world. Today Facebook has 600 million active users worldwide. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world – behind China and India. The population of the United States is smaller now than Facebook’s population.

One year ago Twitter had 24 million users per month. A year later that number has soared to 190 million Twitter users per month.  That equates to about 65 million tweets a day and more than 800,000 search queries per day, according to Twitter.com – Quantcast Audience Profile.

YouTube has become the number two search engine behind Google. One year ago, people were uploading 20 hours of video to YouTube every minute. Today 35 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

If you’re looking for a job, consider that a year ago, LinkedIn had 50 million members in more than 200 countries. Today, it has 100 million members.

Do you have something to say? Then consider writing your own blog, but be aware, you aren’t alone. BlogPulse reports that 156 million blogs exist, including this one.

Are you communicating where you need to be?