Report: Social networking up 83 percent for U.S.

The explosion in social networking may be even greater than imagined. The time that people in the U.S. spend on social network sites is up 83 percent from a year ago, according to a report from market researcher Nielsen Online.

Facebook enjoys the top spot among social networks, with people having spent a total of 13.9 billion minutes on the service in April of this year, 700 percent more than in April 2008, Nielsen said. Minutes spent on Twitter soared a whopping 3,712 percent to almost 300 million, versus around 7.8 million from the same month a year ago.

Former top dog MySpace watched its usage drop nearly one-third to around 4.9 billion minutes, from 7.2 billion in April 2008. MySpace still scored the number one spot for online video among the top 10, thanks to its users streaming more than 120 million videos from the site for April of this year.

"We have seen some major growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace," Jon Gibs, Nielsen's vice president for online media and agency insights, said in a statement. "Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space."

But the report also offered a cautionary note: the social networking user can be fickle, quickly bouncing from one service to another. "Remember Friendster? Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force? Neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune," said Gibs. "Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment's notice."

Despite its growth and popularity, Twitter may be especially vulnerable to users who don't stick around. Another Nielsen report from April found that 60 percent of Twitter users--dubbed Twitter Quitters by the media--abandon their tweets after only one month of use. Only about 30 percent of users on MySpace and Facebook jump ship.

Nielsen Online, part of the Nielsen Company, measures consumer use of online and mobile services and other related media.

[sting7k]

Funny, I'd say it's down 83% for me...

Facebook is almost a chore now.

[twitter_1963]

Emm, hate to spot the obvious but another 5% of the US population is unemployed and a masse of students are leaving University with no Job ! Don't you think as a something to occupy their time, you'd expect this. Social Networking is only for people that have the time. i have a job, luckily, and I don't have the time for Social Networking...

[twitter_1963]

And many people are now referring to the time our kids are spending here.. UNSOCIAL-NETWORKING - LOL

[Will_Cox]

It should be interesting to see how this all plays out in the next year or so. Where will Facebook and Twitter be among the social networks once the young users grow older? These social sites have to set themselves apart now days in order to give users a reason to have multiple accounts. Facebook has obviously done a good job and introducing new ways to keep users busy.
It's also gotten to the point where new things like niche sites have opened a new door and traditionally run networking sites are going outside the box for its users. www.hoponthis.com is an upstart networking site which allows users to collect tangible rewards for staying active and building connections.
Users may want to do different things with their networking sites so the door is open for choice of the consumer to see how they want to spend their ever-increasing networking time.

[socialnetworkingsoftware]

this is no surprise. social networks allow busy people to network and keep up with thier freinds, family and clients in a timely manner.

the challenge is to integrate all the popular networks in one admin ...so the user can contribute easier to the network. i think the social networks should find a better way to work together.

[mjohnk]

These numbers don't really tell much of a story. The first thing I'd like to know is the number of users for each social network so that you could get a stat for average-time-on-site. For instance, with 200 million registered users, the 13.9 billion minutes spent on Facebook nets out to an average of approx. 69.5 minutes per user (of course, some spend much more time on the site and others spend much less). By comparison, Twitter has an estimated 5-10 million registered users, yielding an average time of of between 30 and 60 minutes per month per user. In both cases, an average of just over 1 hour per month is hardly anything to shout about from the mountain top.

And then, of course, this doesn't even begin to get into what those people are actually doing during their time on these sites and whether its could be calssified as "quality" by some measure.

[Harrison912]

As a web site owner of safety and security products, I've jumped into the social marketing arena in the last year or so and, I have to say, I prefer FaceBook and Twitter to my other social accounts. Thanks, Lance for this great article.

[tony51cnet]

Personally, I'd be see no loss if all the "social networking" sites disappear.

I'd much prefer that people get off their bottoms and do useful and productive things.

By the way, I think "twitter" is one of the worst ideas we've seen yet ... of measurable value only to the owners due to the money it brings them.

[JackieinChicago]

www.vreebit.com is a new website coming at the end of July - accepting pre-signups now - reserve your username and your free website combines a lot of the features of Facebook, Yahoo Groups, LinkedIn, Google Docs - great for organizing, sharing, advocatingm etc,