Report: Americans can’t get enough of social networking sites

By Trevor Mogg September 12, 2011

As far as online Americans are concerned, Facebook is king. That’s according to Nielsen’s latest Social Media Report, published by the market research firm on Monday. The report states that Americans spend more time on Facebook than on any other website.

Social networks and blogs now account for almost 23 percent of the total time spent online – this is twice the amount of time spent playing games online (9.8 percent) – the number 2 category. Next up was emailing (7.6 percent).

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“Social media not only connects consumers with each other, but also with just about every place they go and everything they watch and buy,” Nielsen said of the findings after questioning 1,865 adults about their online habits.

The report listed the top 5 US social networks and blogs, measured in terms of how long US users spent on them in May of this year. If it was a horse race, Facebook would be over the finishing line before the others were even out of the starting stalls. Americans spent a combined total of 53 billion minutes on Facebook in May. Next up was Blogger, with users visiting that site for a paltry 723 million minutes in all. Tumblr, Twitter and LinkedIn came third, fourth and fifth respectively. Sure, it’s not as if we didn’t know Facebook was popular. But that popular?

Facebook’s own statistics show that among its 750 million active users around the world, 50 percent log on to the site every day.

Nilsen’s report highlights the rapid growth of social media, saying that today almost 80 percent of active Internet users visit social networks and blogs.

The results of the survey also reveal something about online consumer habits among social network users, with 70 percent of adults on Facebook also choosing to shop online – this makes them 12 percent more likely to buy things online than the average adult Internet user.

As for up-and-coming social media sites, Nielsen points out that Tumblr is one to watch, having almost tripled its audience in the last twelve months. But let’s face it, it still has some way to go before it catches up with Mark Zuckerberg’s creation.

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