Changing the World with 140 Characters

With more than 100 million active users of Twitter and over 800 million Facebook members around the world today, social media offer opportunities to reach new audiences, and engage in new ways.

The pace of growth of social media platforms is extraordinary. Twitter reached around 100 million tweets per day in January 2011. Six months later, that number had doubled. And as new technologies develop, the rate of adoption on the “Big Three”—Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—only accelerates. Immediately after Apple’s release of iOS5, which directly integrates Twitter for the iPhone and iPad, the number of tweets quickly jumped to 250 million a day. Facebook is expected to hit the one billion user mark within the next few months, just in time for the company’s predicted IPO (the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Facebook may file the paperwork for an IPO as early as Wednesday ).

These new media developments are not only relevant for the developed world. More than two thirds of the world’s more than 5 billion mobile phone owners live in developing countries. At the end of 2012 mobile devices will overtake all other means of accessing the Internet. That will have profound implications for all of us working in development.

You need only look at the maps of usage around the world to see the writing on the wall: social media are pervasive and growing faster in developing countries than in the developed world. Facebook is toppling smaller local social networks in a seemingly unstoppable march to global dominance, even making inroads in Brazil, where until recently Orkut was the social networking platform of choice.

The Menlo Park-based social networking company’s massive expansion in countries like Brazil, India, Mexico, and Vietnam suggest that social media should be figured into any advocacy strategy for development.

“How Africa Tweets,” a recent analysis of tweeting in Africa, shows that 57% of tweets from Africa are sent from mobile devices, and 60% of Africa’s most active Tweeters are aged 20-29. There’s a healthy discussion going on across the continent on social media, but business and political leaders are still largely absent from the debate in the Twittersphere. Mark Flanagan of Portland, who conducted this research, said: “As Twitter lifts off in Africa, governments, businesses, and development agencies can really no longer afford to stay out of a new space where dialogue will increasingly be taking place.”

Why Twitter? Why Now?
A month before Twitter debuted in March 2007 at SXSW (the Austin festival sometimes described as “spring break for geeks”) @Jack, then an engineer with the upstart text messaging platform, tweeted “One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters.”

In Tahrir Square and across the Arab world last year we witnessed the power of social media as activists harnessed Facebook and Twitter as tools to empower change. (Arabic is the fastest growing language for Twitter.) Women cyberactivists in the Arab world in particular have seen social media as a means to participate and change the world, and they have used the full force of these tools to amplify their voice. On Wall Street and in similar social protests around the world a hashtag (#OWS) became the organizing tool for the 99%.

In October 2011, First Lady Michelle Obama sent her first tweet. Of course her husband had already blazed a trail in 2008, becoming the first American president to win office with an effective social media strategy that raised over $600 million in campaign contributions, and activated voters and citizens, changing the dynamics of political campaigns, and potentially politics, evermore.

“Africa’s Twitter revolution is really just beginning,” said Beatrice Karanja, Head of Portland Nairobi: “Twitter is helping Africa and Africans to connect in new ways and swap information and views. And for Africa – as for the rest of the world – that can only be good.”

Social media @CGAP
For CGAP, 2010-11 was a watershed year in our approach to social media. The CGAP Microfinance Blog, has become a platform to engage on emerging issues such as the situation in Andhra Pradesh, the SKS IPO, and also fundamental issues such as savings mobilization, interest rates, and commercial approaches to microfinance.

The coming year will see CGAP using social media more and more as we move beyond a single corporate voice to expand our engagement through staff blogging and tweeting in their particular areas of expertise. CGAP CEO Tilman Ehrbeck launched on Twitter this week sharing his outlook for financial inclusion over the coming year (follow @TilmanEhrbeck).

Social media succeed globally by going local, and this is what makes these platforms attractive for development specialists looking to engage with local communities all around the world.

For all of us working on financial inclusion, social media are no longer just part of a formal communications strategy, but increasingly part of how we engage with the world. Within a very short period of time we will look back on the social media numbers cited here as a quaint reminiscence of a time where social media was an add-on, rather than an integral part of everyday life for everyone, everywhere.