U.S. Social Networking Up 83 Percent; Facebook Reigns

Facebook rules, MySpace drools, Twitter's on the rise and social networking is exploding in the U.S. and around the world. Now, some hard data from Nielsen Online has put a number to just how much. In a study on social networking trends released Wednesday, Nielsen said the amount of time people in the U.S. spend on social networking sites (at work and from home) has increased by 83 percent over the past year.

If ever you needed a numeric indication of just how much of a time suck Facebook, Twitter and other social networking platforms are, we've picked out a few nuggets for your consumption:

1. Facebook reigns supreme.

According to Nielsen Online, Facebook users in the United States collectively spent 13.9 billion minutes on Facebook in April 2009. That's up 700 percent from the 1.7 billion minutes they were spending in April 2008.

2. MySpace lags, except in online video.

MySpace has seen a major drop-off in usage, and Nielsen Online's statistics are in line with the formerly dominant social network platform's decline. According to Nielsen, social networking users spent 5 billion minutes on MySpace in April -- down 31 percent from a year earlier. MySpace does continue to be the No. 1 social networking site for online video, however, far ahead of Facebook, Stickam and other online video sites that are also social networking platforms. The number of minutes spent by MySpace video watchers in April (384 million) far exceeds the number spent by Facebook video watchers (113.5 million.)

3. Twitter's coming on strong.

Twitter is still the No. 5-ranked social networking platform in overall minutes spent by users, but the microblogging site is exploding in popularity, having shot up to 300 million overall minutes in the U.S. in April. That represents a 3,712 percent increase from Twitter's April 2008 numbers, according to Nielsen.

4. Other social networking sites are growing, too -- just not as dramatically in most cases.

After MySpace's 31 percent drop, the only major social networking platform to decline in the overall minutes spent from last year was Gaia Online. Blogger, Tagged.com, MyYearbook, LiveJournal and SlashKey all posted some degree of growth, with Tagged.com growing 998 percent from April 2008 and LiveJournal growing 273 percent.

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