And advertising will contribute $8.8bn to the pot.
Analyst Gartner reckons the trending social media space will bring in global revenues of $16.9 billion this year, rising 43.1 per cent from $11.8bn in 2011.
Ads will be the largest contributor of the revs, bringing in $8.8bn for 2012, while social gaming revs are set to hit $6.2bn, as subscriptions notch up $278 million.
Neha Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner, said: "Usage of online social media has matured, and more than one billion people worldwide will use social networks this year.
"Although the number of social media users is large, and in some cases increasingly mature in their usage patterns, the market is still in its early stages from a revenue perspective.
"Social networking sites should deploy data analytic technologies that interrogate social networks to give marketers a more accurate picture of trends in accordance with consumers' needs and preferences."
With almost a seventh of the world's population signed up to social networks, Gartner expects growth to remain at a moderate pace, while more mobile forms are set to roll out to differentiate from existing mediums.
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