Which Social Networks Take Home the Gold?

How popular is your favorite social network?  It is important to know if it is on the rise or decline because well, what is the use of a SOCIAL network with no one on it?  See which are on the rise and some interesting facts about who is on which social network with mashable.com’s Which Social Networks Take Home the Gold?

We love the Olympics, but an international social media showdown is a little more our speed.

Ignite Social Media is back with the 2012 Social Network Analysis Report, breaking down demographic, geographic and search data that shows which networks are the underdogs and which are mounting the winners’ podium.

Here at Mashable, we can’t get enough GIFs and hashtags. We’re excited to see that this type of digital currency is gaining value — Twitter and Tumblr are among the top five networks with the strongest rate of growth.Pinterest, Reddit and LinkedIn round out the pack.

Launched just over a year ago, Google+ was included in the report for the first time this year but is notably absent from the list of fastest growing platforms. And while Facebook is actively continuing its quest for world domination, it’s hard to improve your growth rate when practically everyone’s already joined the club.

Check out the graphic below, with data based on a report from Ignite Social Media. It also features statistics about men versus women, the youngest skewing networks and which sites are luring in the whiz kids. The researchers at Ignite point out that social network search interest continues to remain stagnant, as it has since 2009.

The timeline trend charts are especially effective showing the rise (and fall) of many of the most popular and well-known networks.  Even though these are “simple bar charts”, they are incredibly effective in making the data easy to understand to the readers.  Although its explained in the footer, it would have been better to explain the  y-axis unit of measure along with the charts.

Found on mashable.com