Neilsen Online have just released their latest round of web usage statistics, with this eye-catching finding:
Now visited by over two-thirds (67 percent) of the global* online population, “Member Communities,” which includes both social networks and blogs, has become the fourth most popular online category – ahead of personal email…
Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking. Nielsen found UK mobile Web users have the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23 percent (2 million people) doing so.
These findings once again demonstrate the importance of social networking for those elected to public office, or seeking such election: those networks are where a large part of the public are.
The report also comes with this, shall we say interesting, definition of “global”:
*“Global”’ and “World”’ encompass the following countries in which Nielsen Online has a NetView panel – Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the USA.
Ah well, at least that’s more international than baseball’s “World” Series 🙂
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3 Comments
I find that hard to believe given that you need email to register with social network sites – and Facebook really relies on email surely.
Interesting point Graham. You certainly need an email address to register in (almost?) all cases, but once you’ve done that you don’t need to use that email again – so in any given time period you might subsequently not use email but use social networking sites. I find the email alerts from Facebook vital, but if you use the site very frequently, then you can get by with simply logging in to see what’s happening.
They seem to be using a particular concept of reach. On average, people may spend more time on social networking sites. That’s not the same as more people use social networking sites full stop.
As t’other Graham says, you need an email address to register. Just as people might not go back to the email address regularly, many people registered on social networking sites don’t visit them much.