We all know that online communities are growing in leaps and bounds. Exponentially. A recent blog post on Royal Pingdom tells us just exactly how much (in 2010):

• 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
• 100 million – New accounts added on Twitter in 2010
• 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
• 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user).
• 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
• 250 million – New people on Facebook in 2010.
• 30 billion – Pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month.
• 70% – Share of Facebook’s user base located outside the United States.
• 20 million – The number of Facebook apps installed each day.
• 2 billion – The number of videos watched per day on YouTube.
• 35 – Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
• 5 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (September 2010).
• 3000+ – Photos uploaded per minute to Flickr.
• 3+ billion – Photos uploaded per month to Facebook.

Staggering, isn’t it? It’s amazing to me to reflect back over the last few years and think about how much social networking has become a huge part of my life. Facebook allows me to regularly check in with and keep connected to friends and family in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to. Twitter has gotten me new friends from all over the globe with whom I now work and create projects with. YouTube helps me learn new things, and helps me teach. My blog allows me to be a writer and to have a creative outlet. Clearly, I see all these things as incredibly positive.

Where will it go? What kind of a world will my son grow up in? Who knows, but it sure is going to be an interesting ride…

Read the entire post here.