Social networking has been all over the news lately: Twitter hitting the 100 million account mark (and its users sending out 50 million tweets a day); Facebook reaching 500 million active users; Foursquare, the new Digg (glad they revamped it). But it’s the latest statistics that tell the real story.
Nielsen Research just reported that, in the U.S., 22.7% of time spent online during the month of June was spent on social networks (including blogs). That’s up from 15.8% the previous month. That’s a huge wow!
Email was a big loser, dropping 2.2% in share to 8.3%. Instant Messaging also recorded drops from 4.7% to 4%. Gaming was at 10.2%. The conclusion? Forty percent of U.S. online time is spent on three activities: social networks, gaming and email.
Mobile Growth
Some great stats on mobile for the month:
- Email dominates mobile usage with 41.6% of mobile users accessing email on their devices.
- The number of people accessing social networks on mobile climbed to 10.5%.
- People viewing website portals rose to 11.6%.
- Listening to music and streaming video experienced positive movements in uptake, while news, current affairs and sports services all registered contractions.
