It’s very easy to forget how quickly and (some would say) effortlessly social media has become an integral part of many of our lives. But roll back the clock just 10 years, and Twitter (2006), Facebook (2004) and even MySpace (2003) not only didn’t exist, but were yet to be imagined. As were their possibilities and potential.

This infographic from Search Engine Journal takes a look at the growth of social media over the last five years.

Key takeaways include:

• Twitter’s amazing rise from 2008-11
• Facebook’s staggering 63.46% membership share – if Facebook was a country it would be the third largest in the world, and twice the size of the USA!
• 1 in 4 Americans watch a YouTube video every single day
• 53% of employees research potential job candidates on social networks

The data contains a few inaccuracies, certainly when it comes to Twitter, which was seeing 140 million tweets per day back in March, which leapt to 200 million in June (not 95 million as the graphic states), and has far more than 95 million registered users (which also clashes with other data in the image) – but that aside this is a nicely-compiled visualization.

(Source: Search Engine Journal.)