Wondering if marketing via social networks is worth your company’s time? New stats from Nielsen should help you answer that question.
According to Nielsen’s recently released research data, consumers worldwide spent more than 5 ½ hours on social networking sites in December 2009. That’s up from a little more than 3 hours in December 2008, and 2 hours and 10 minutes in December 2007.
So according to Nielsen, time spent on social networking sites by people around the world has increased 82% in just one year. In addition, overall traffic to social networking sites has significantly spiked as well.
But wait, there’s more!
Nielsen says Facebook captured 67% of the global social media audience last month, with 206.9 million unique visitors. In the United States specifically, Facebook towered over its peers on the list of most visited social networking sites.
Similar to the data for global users, U.S. users are also spending much more time on their favorite social networks:
People in the U.S. continue to spend more time on social networking and blog sites as well, with total minutes increasing 210% year-over-year and the average time per person increasing 143% year-over-year in December 2009. Year-over-year growth in average time spent by U.S. users, for both Facebook and Twitter.com, outpaced the overall growth for the category, increasing 200% and 368%, respectively.
Interesting Stat: Australians top the list of most time spent on social media sites, spending an average of almost 7 hours in December. (That’s a lot of G’day, Mates!)
For some reason, I don’t question Nielsen stats as much as I do stats from other research companies—probably because of the company’s history of measuring broadcast media audiences. But if, like me, you’re interested in how Nielsen acquires its data, you can learn more about it here.
This Nielsen data helps paint the picture of what we see happening online: social networks are becoming the user’s window to the Internet. Social networks are providing the content, information, recommendations and engagement that online audiences want and need.
Still wondering if your company should engage customers via social media? We can help. Check out Oneupweb’s Social Media Marketing Services to get a better idea of what we do, in addition to where we like to be social, too.
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This Nielsen data helps paint the picture of what we see happening online: social networks are becoming the user’s window to the Internet. Social networks are providing the content, information, recommendations and engagement that online audiences want and need.
Good job! Thanks for this post. I usually spend more than 2 hours in a day browsing Facebook. It’s so cool.
This once again shows why you need to follow the trends, and go where the people are. Where else can you find people dedicating hours every day to something? While I’m a heavy Twitter user, I’m also building up Facebook pages, trying to share information with people. Social is such a new, changing industry right now, even if you learn something today, it may not hold true for tomorrow. Keep trying. Keep learning. And always stay active.
This really is no surprise to me. Social media has changed the landscape on the way people communicate and market themselves.
I still remember old fashioned Chat Rooms! This “new” world of social media networking comes across as more acceptable, more business/info-oriented, and — dare I say it? — thick with monetizing potential! We’ve certainly come a long way from The Globe and ICQ.
I hope people remember to leave there houses in a few years. Its almost easier to talk to people on social networks then it is to deal with real human interaction. I hope those numbers don’t go up to 40 hours a month anytime soon. I will miss barbecues.