Social Networking Usage Surges Globally

According to the Nielsen Company, the global average time spent per person on social networking sites is now nearly five and half hours per month (February 2010 data), with Facebook accounting for the majority of that time. That’s up more than two hours from last year.

In arriving at that conclusion, Nielsen measured social network usage per person across 10 countries and compared that to data from the same time last year.

When looking at specific countries, Italy tops the charts with social network time per person just under six and a half hours per month (6:27:53), and Australia is a close second (6:02:34). The United States — which has the largest unique social networking audience — ranked third in usage with the average person spending just over six hours (6:02:34) on social networks.

What’s even more interesting is that Facebook — with its 400 million members — is far and away dominating the rest of the competition.
Facebook is the number-one social network destination worldwide and accounts for nearly six hours (5:52:00) per person with the average user logging in more than 19 times per month. What that boils down to is that the time spent on Facebook is almost five hours longer than the time spent on MySpace (0:59:33), the second closest social network in terms of time spent on site per person.
Nielsen also found that:

- Globally, the average Twitterer conducts three unique sessions for a total of 36 minutes per month.
- In the U.S. the active unique social network audience grew roughly 29% from 115 million in February 2009 to 149 million in February 2010.
- Active unique users of social networks are also up nearly 30% globally, rising from 244.2 million to 314.5 million collectively.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sbayram


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