Time spent on social networks up 82%
The amount of time spent on social networking sites by consumers worldwide rose by 82% year on year in December 2009, according to new figures from The Nielsen Company.
Global consumers spent an average of five hours, 35 minutes and five seconds on social networking sites in December 2009, up from three hours, three minutes and 54 seconds a year previously.
In addition, unique audience was up 27% to 307.4 million in December 2009.
Facebook dramatically increased its dominance of the US online social networking market in the year to December 2009. In December 2009, it recorded about 110 million unique visitors, a 100% increase from 55 million unique visitors in December 2008. And while Twitter only recorded 18.1 million unique visitors in December 2009, this represented 579% growth from 2.7 million unique visitors a year earlier.
A global study released last week by Alterian revealed that 66% of marketing professionals will be investing in social media marketing (SMM) in the next 12 months.
The survey of 1,068 marketers also revealed that, of those investing in SMM, 40% said they would be moving more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget to funding their SMM activities.