Mashable - Facebook Timeline, SOPA, KONY and U.S. President Barack Obama's re-election were just some of the big social-media stories of 2012.

This year, we also saw Pinterest emerge as one of the top social networks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg became the center of media attention after the social network finally went public.

Social media is no longer a trend, but a way of life, according to an infographic by The SEO Company and Nowsourcing. In fact, people spend 121 billion minutes on social media -- and that's just in the U.S. alone, the infographic reveals. (Facebook, Web)