A Nielsen report Global Faces and Networked Places, tracks the shift in consumer behaviour and the emerging growth in popularity of social networks. The Nielsen study measured online activity in the USA, Brazil, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Japan and Australia.
We’re All Becoming Social Butterflies
Social network and blogging sites pass email to become the 4th most popular online activity with a global active reach of 66.8% as of December 2008. That’s a 5.4% year-over-year increase and the largest percentage increase of all online sectors. Search still held the top spot with a global active reach of 85.9%.
Growth of Social Networks is a Global Phenomenon
The online reach of social networks is growing globally and shows little sign of slowing down. Member community sites now have a 67% global reach, up 5.4% over the previous year. Germany has seen the largest YOY growth seeing a 12.5% increase in the reach of member community sites. Local players like Wer-kennt-wen and StudiVZ recently taken over by traditional media companies have accelerated the growth of these social networks. Facebook tripled its audience to over 2.4 million Unique Visitors since launching a German language interface in March 2008. However, it is only the sixth most popular social network in Germany.
Social Networks Still a Matter of Local Taste
Facebook has seen the largest growth of all social network sites with its active reach soaring to 29.9%. Put another way, Facebook is visited by three in every ten people online across the world. While it continues to show strong growth and dominate headlines, smaller, more local players show the diversity of social networks.
In countries where Facebook isn’t the most popular social network sites there are many locally grown sites to fill the void. China, Germany, and Japan are all dominated by local players where Facebook doesn’t even register in the top three.
Social Networking – The Ultimate Time Waster
More people are spending their time on the internet every day and member community sites are where their choosing to spend most of that time. Just how much time? 63% more time over last year or 45 billion minutes! On Facebook, the increase was a massive 566%, from 3.1 billion minutes to 20.5 billion. Taking Nielsen Online’s Global Index number of 108.3 million people that visited the site in December 2008, that works out to an average of 3 hours and 10 minutes per user.
‘Member Community Share of Time’ has doubled in most of the countries monitored by the study. Member Community sites now account for 1 of every 11 minutes spent online globally, up from 1 in 15 minutes in 2007. Incredibly, 1 in every 4 minutes is spent on a Member Community site in Brazil. While the share of time in the UK is 1 in every 6 minutes (up from 1 in 13 in 2007), and Italy 1 in 7 minutes (up from 1 in 14 in 2007).
