This series is supported by Ben & Jerry's Joe, Ben & Jerry's new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

Infographics help communicate information in a digestible manner as they creatively present data in an understandable and engaging format. With social media growing at an ever increasing pace, there is now a wealth of data about how people interacting with one another on the web. Naturally, infographics have proven an excellent aid in expressing high volumes of social web information in a clear, visually appealing manner.

Here are 10 infographics that prove as beautiful as they are interesting.







This is a global map of social web involvement which illustrates that hundreds of millions of web users are creating and sharing content every month. It provides a clear visualization of the ways in which social technologies are adopted differently across the world, showing the number of active bloggers, social networkers, video sharers, photo uploaders and microbloggers.

Interestingly, it reveals that despite the Twitter hype, microblogging is still not a mass social activity and is nowhere near the size and scale of blogging.







A compass is a device for orientating oneself and guiding physical direction. The social marketing compass points a brand in a physical and experimental direction, allowing them to connect with their customers, peers, and influencers, where those users already interact and seek guidance online.

Created to illustrate social marketing within the book Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web, this infographic was also available as a poster to celebrate the book's pre-sale.







The Web Trend Map plots the Internet’s leading names and domains onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains and personalities are carefully selected through dialogue with map enthusiasts, and every domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, and character. As a result, the map produces a web of associations: some provocative, some curious, others ironically accurate.

It's available as an A0 poster (33.25 x 46.75 inches) and is printed in Tokyo, Japan, on exquisite, heavyweight, matte paper.







The Conversation Prism is a visual mapping of the shifting landscape of social networks and micro communities. It beautifully represents social media tools for marketing, finance, human resources and more. Each tool is represented by their logo and arranged in a circular, flower-like structure. The graphic will continue to evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

It provides a visual representation of the true expansiveness of the Social Web and the conversations that define it and is an update to Version 1.0 which was released in August 2008.







Numerous social media sites have witnessed explosive growth of their user bases in the last several years, but it’s a known fact that user demographics, including age, gender, income and education, vary across different platforms. This infographic maps the demographics of the world’s 7 most popular social media sites.

While there aren’t any quantitative data points listed, it’s definitely worth a quick glance to see how the various sites compare to one another.







This infographic describes and ranks 10 popular social media channels by customer communication, brand exposure, traffic generation and SEO impact, which enables us to get a good grasp of how each tool helps users achieve business goals.

It acts as a roadmap of the social web and demonstrates which social channel will give the most bang for the buck in terms of customer communication, brand exposure, traffic, and SEO.







The mobile web is growing at an exponential rate, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down. This infographic illustrates the rates at which people use the mobile web for social activities.

It highlights a few intriguing facts, such as that there are more than 100 million active Facebook mobile users, and that those mobile users are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users. It also notes that 18-34 year olds account for about 50% of mobile social networking usage, with female usage higher than male usage.







The explosion of social networking sites over the past decade has facilitated a transformation in the way we communicate with each other. This infographic details some of the social communities with over 1 million users, both active and defunct.

The actual timeline itself is pretty interesting as you can clearly see the explosion of social networks between 2003 and 2006 (with the creation of Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn), and the relative slowdown in their creation after 2007.







The Biggest Shift details the importance and extent of social media. Essentially, if you are looking to utilize word of mouth advertising, social media is there to help boost your efforts. By focusing your marketing attention to the top social networking websites, you will see the immediate benefits of “fishing where the fish are”.

It’s difficult to ignore the facts; YouTube is now the second largest search engine on the web; 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared each week on Facebook; and perhaps most significantly, 96% of 18-35 year olds are on a social network.







This is a closer look into the adoption of social media platforms by global Fortune 100 companies as they look to leverage these networks to reach and communicate with their target audiences.

While Facebook may still be the biggest social networking site, when it comes to business, Twitter seems to be the favorite among the Fortune 100 companies, with 65% owning a corporate Twitter account.

Which infographics do you think best showcase the intricacies of social media?

Series supported by Ben & Jerry's Joe

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry's Joe, Ben & Jerry's new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

[img credit: despair.com]