Complain about a product or service

Social Networks & Blogs Fastest-Growing Online Activity

"Member communities" evolving into integral online experience

March 11, 2009
"Member communities," which includes both social networks and blogs, has become the fourth most popular online category — ahead of personal email.

Now visited by over two-thirds of the global online population, this segment is growing twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors — search, portals, PC software and email — according to The Nielsen Company's Global Faces and Networked Places.

"Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience," said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online. "While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing. Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large. This study explains why."

According to the Nielsen report, Facebook — the world s most popular social network — is visited monthly by three in every 10 people online across the nine markets in which Nielsen tracks social networking use. Orkut in Brazil has the largest domestic online reach of any social network in these markets.

Other key findings include:

• One in every 11 minutes online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites

• The social network and blogging audience is becoming more diverse in terms of age: the biggest increase in visitors during 2008 to Member Community Web sites globally came from the 35-49 year old age group.

• 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 doing so, compared with 19 percent in the U.S. These numbers are a big increase over last year — up 249 percent in the U.K. and 156 percent in the U.S.

Social networking isn' t just growing rapidly, it's evolving — both in terms of a broader audience and compelling new functionality, said Alex Burmaster, author of the study and Communications Director across EMEA for Nielsen Online. We felt compelled to analyze the state of the social networking market globally and consider what implications this has for our publisher and advertiser clients.

Among the markets Nielsen measured, penetration of visits to social networks and blogs was highest in Brazil, where 80 percent of the online audience visits such sites. The share of overall Internet time for which social networks and blogs account is also highest in Brazil, where nearly one in four minutes spent online is spent on these sites.

Germany saw the greatest increase in penetration of social networks and blogs across 2008, from 39 percent of the online audience in December 2007 to 51 percent in December 2008 — a relative growth of 39 percent.

Report Your Experience
If you've had a bad experience -- or a good one -- with a consumer product or service, we'd like to hear about it. All complaints are reviewed by class action attorneys and are considered for publication on our site. Knowledge is power! Help spread the word. File your consumer report now.

Share		Follow us on Twitter.

Back to the top |