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Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year over Year

This blog post refers to up to date information on time spent on social network websites worldwide. It also gives a 3 year trend of how hours and numbers of people world wide has increased over the years.

In December 2009, on average, consumers spent 5.5 hours a month on social networking sites, a 82% rise from the previous year. Also found to be rising was the traffic generated by these sites which has grown over the three year period studied. ‘Globally, social networks and blogs are the most popular online category when ranked by average time spent’ (December 2009)
‘Facebook was the number 1 global social networking destination in December and 67% of global social media users visited the site during the month’ This equates to 206.9 million unique visitors, which is a huge amount and is a massive number when compared to the total number of social network users, which is at 307.4 million users.
From December 2007 to December 2009, the number of consumers has risen from 210.9 million to the previously mentioned 307.4 million users. A massive jump, which shows the huge rise in popularity in the use of social networking sites. This jump may have something to do with the demise of Bebo and Myspace and the rise of sites such as Twitter.com which have taken off.
American figures show that consumers are continuing to spend more and more time on social networking sites and blogs with ‘total minutes increasing 210% year-over-year and the average time per person increasing 143% year-over-year in December 2009’. For Facebook and Twitter.com specifically ‘outpaced the overall growth for the category, increasing 200% and 368%, respectively.’
Twitter.com itself is still the ‘fastest-growing in December 2009 in terms of unique visitors, increasing 579% year-over-year, from 2.7 million unique visitors in December 2008 to 18.1 million in December 2009’ This rise is probably due to the usability of Twitter.com but also the fact that many famous icons like Steven Fry and Jonathan Ross as well as hundreds more use Twitter on a day to day basis, making it very appealing for fans to get involved with just to get to know what their idols are doing.
To prove the dominance of Facebook and Twitter, out of the 5 sites included in a bar graph plotting visitor numbers over the three years, they are the only sites that have grown considerably each year with Facebook taking massive leaps each year.
When the findings are separated up into separate countries, Australia has the highest average time spent per person on Social Media sites in December 2009 with an average of 6.52 hours spent in that month. The United States spends an average of 6.09 hours per month on these sites and close behind is the United Kingdom with 6.08 hours per month
This blog provides good numerical data and because it is over a three year period, despite not covering 2010 gives a good idea of the trending that Facebook and Twitter are a part of.