Say cheese: Instagram surges a whopping 8121% in Singapore visits

Singaporeans go gaga over social sites as Pinterest visits also rocketed 623%.

An study by Experian, a global information services company, reveals that niche social networks massively increased their market share of all visits to social sites with Instagram (https://instagram.com) and Pinterest (https://pinterest.com/) emerging as the global winners.

Here's more from Experian:

The following table highlights the growth of Instagram and Pinterest between July 2011 and July 2012 in terms of their share of visits to All Sites by country. 

The meteoric rise of both Instagram, which allows users to share photos with others through social networks and Pinterest, the online pinboard that allows users to organise and share their interests with others, has resulted in them now featuring in the top 20 social media networks used in Singapore, the UK and North America. Other niche social networks such as Reddit in Australia, schoolFeed in the UK and Stock Twits in the US have also experienced significant gains.

Bill Tancer, Head of Global Research, Experian commented: “The growth of both Instagram and Pinterest over the past year has been phenomenal. The reason for their success is that they haven’t tried to be ‘another Facebook’. Instead, they both identified a gap in the market and used the scale of Facebook to reach consumers. Both networks are image based which people love – we all relate better to pictures than just words. For brands that are retailers for example, a site like Pinterest presents a fantastic opportunity to promote products in a compelling and organised way to a wide group of people across the world.

"Over the next 12 months, we expect to see a proliferation of niche social networks. Offering deeper functionality combined with a lower technical barrier to entry will mean new leaders in social media being created in a matter of days versus weeks and months.”

As brands get to grips with using social media effectively to reach and connect with customers and prospects, Experian’s findings illustrate how broad the social media landscape has become globally. Social networking is one of the biggest online pastimes across the globe. In each country there are thousands of social networks and forums, varying from 1500 in Brazil to 7000 in the UK.