2010-10-07

Demographics is Destiny: Social Networking

Asia Has Gone Mad for Social Media
If you find it hard to escape Twitter or Facebook, be glad you’re not living in Asia. As of June, 37% of tweets were coming from Asian users, compared with 25% in the United States.

Asians are taking to social media of all kinds, both foreign and home-grown, at a faster pace than Americans, notes news agency Agence France-Presse. And nowhere is this enthusiasm more evident, or more surprising, than in Indonesia, which landed on the Web technology radar in May when Yahoo! (YHOO) acquired Koprol, an Indonesia-born social networking site.

Specifically Indonesia. Take a look at the population pyramid for Indonesia below.
And compare that to the United States.


Here's the AFP article mentioned above. Asians muscling into social media world
"Twitter users in Asia, mainly located in Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, account for 37 percent of tweets," said Semiocast, which studied 2.9 million tweets over a period of 24 hours on June 22.
It said US-generated tweets now account for only 25 percent of messages on Twitter, down from 30 percent in March.
Asia-Pacific users are also creating social media content "to an extent that is unheard of almost anywhere in the world," Crampton added.

Data from research firm Forrester showed Chinese, South Korean, Japanese and Australians creating video, music and text content for social media at a much higher rate than Americans did last year.

And despite China's ban on Facebook and Twitter, the nation still boasts the largest number of social media users in any country thanks to locally-developed substitutes, the Hong Kong-based Crampton said.
Demographics is destiny. We need to be looking at the world as it will be, not as it is. Today, the Asians are leading the way in social networking, an industry dominated by the young. In 20 years, these social networkers will dominate the financial markets.

Much of the economic analysis I come across in mainstream outlets assumes that the world as it exists today will be the world of tomorrow. Yes, there are projections of economic growth and countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Brazil become larger portions of global trade, but I don't have the sense that many have thought through the implications of this, especially with regards to demographics.

Many Westerners can understand the impact of the baby boom and how the Boomers affected the entire socio-politcal-economic structure in their country. Their rebellious youth translated into global political rebellion. Their early working and household formation years helped drive inflation. Their peak savings period of middle age led to massive financial bubbles. Their switch into retirement led to a collapse of the bubbles and large entitlement liabilities. The Boomers are at the center of the story because they are the largest demographic group. It's going to be the same with Asia. The future is here, in the East.

I believe there is also a demographic component to socionomics. The young are generally more optimistic than the old. The political debates in Europe, U.S. and Japan are about preserving the existing system. In Asia, the debates are about how to create new wealth. When looking at social mood on top of demographics, Asia is generally in a rising social mood (good for social networking), while the developed world has a declining social mood (bad for social networking).

China is actually aging demographically, its working age population has peaked as a percentage of the total, but the Chinese definitely have an optimistic mindset. China will present a clear contrast with Japan, which aged after it's economy had reached parity with the West, and the younger Asian countries such as India, which hopefully leads to a better understanding of demographics and growth.

China is the exception among the developing economies in the region though. Overall, the demographics in East Asia will support decades of economic leadership.

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