If you haven’t had time to download and check out Universal McCann’s third annual “Power to the People Social Media Tracker” report, you really should. This is one of the more comprehensive analysis of social media out there with the surveying of 17,000 Internet users across 29 countries. It took the three-day Memorial Day weekend for me to get through the entire report. Here’s some of the highlights:

• social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic and cultural development;
• Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region around the world;
• China has the largest blogging community with more than 42 million;
• 57% have joined a social network, making it the number one platform for content creation and sharing;
• blogs are a mainstream media worldwide and collectively rival any other media now; and,
• 36% think more positively about companies that participate in social media;

Thanks to Jeff Beringer of GolinHarris for flagging the study for me and many others.

Mike Spataro