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Social NetworksBlogs Now Account for One in Every Four and a Half Minutes Online

2 minute read | June 2010

The popularity of social media is undeniable – three of the world’s most popular brands online are social-media related (Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia) and the world now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites. This equates to 22 percent of all time online or one in every four and half minutes. For the first time ever, social network or blog sites are visited by three quarters of global consumers who go online, after the numbers of people visiting these sites increased by 24% over last year. The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than a year ago, almost 6 hours in April 2010 versus 3 hours, 31 minutes last year.

WORLD’S* MOST POPULAR BRANDS ONLINE / April 2010

Brand

% of World’s Internet Population visiting brand

Time per person (hh:mm:ss)

Google

82%

1:21:51

MSN/WindowsLive/Bing

62%

2:41:49

Facebook

54%

6:00:00

Yahoo!

53%

1:50:16

Microsoft

48%

0:45:31

YouTube

47%

0:57:33

Wikipedia

35%

0:13:26

AOL Media Network

27%

2:01:02

eBay

26%

1:34:08

Apple

26%

1:00:28

Source: The Nielsen Company

*Global refers to AU, BR, CH, DE, ES, FR, IT, UK & USA only

Brazil not only tops the list of teams favored to win this year’s World Cup, they also top the charts with the highest percentage (86%) of Internet consumers visiting a social network. The popularity of social networking in Brazil is due to the Orkut phenomenon, which first appeared there in 2004 – by September 2005, half of the Brazilian Internet population visited Orkut. Australian web users average the most time on social networking sites, averaging 7 hours 19 minutes in April, followed by the U.S. and Italy with around six and a half hours each.

Reach and Usage by Country / Apr 2010 (Home & Work)

Social Networking / Blog Sites

Country

% Reach of Active Users

Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)

Brazil

86%

5:03:37

Italy

78%

6:28:41

Spain

77%

5:11:44

Japan

75%

2:50:50

United States

74%

6:35:02

United Kingdom

74%

5:52:38

France

73%

4:10:27

Australia

72%

7:19:13

Germany

63%

4:13:05

Switzerland

59%

3:43:58

Source: The Nielsen Company

Facebook’s reach is the widest in Italy, capturing two-thirds of the active unique audience in April 2010, making the site relatively more popular in Italy than in the three major English-speaking markets. Australia, the U.S. and the UK follow Italy with over 60% of active online consumers visiting the site. In contrast, Japanese people have the least appetite for Facebook, with reach and time spent markedly lower than in any of the other countries measured. Ameba, which offers a micro-blogging platform akin to Twitter, is the most popular social networking and blogging site in Japan, visited by 38% of Japanese people online while Facebook is the 40th most popular.

Facebook Reach and Usage by Country / Apr 2010 (Home & Work)

Country

% Reach of Active Users

Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)

Italy

66%

7:00:21

Australia

63%

7:45:28

United States

62%

6:43:22

United Kingdom

62%

6:19:59

Spain

57%

4:04:53

France

57%

4:33:05

Switzerland

45%

4:18:47

Germany

27%

3:42:50

Brazil

26%

1:46:50

Japan

3%

0:31:38

Source: The Nielsen Company

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