To follow up on data we published yesterday furthering evidence of Facebook’s rise to online dominance, we’re presenting today a wealth of more social networking data from 2010, courtesy of comScore.
So many astounding figures abound, it’s hard to pick where to start. No matter what, everything points back to one fact: people love their social networks.
Nine in 10 U.S. Internet users visit a social networking site monthly. In fact, for users age 15 and older, 14.4 percent of all time spent online in 2010 was spent on a social networking site. The average user spent over 4.5 hours each month on social sites. The international picture is pretty similar, with users age 15 and older spending 15.6 percent of online time on social networks.
The majority of all that time, of course, is being spent on Facebook.
Increasing 38 percent versus the year before, the site’s audience grew from 111.9 million to 153.9 million, making it the fourth most visited Web property and the most visited social networking site by a long shot. Myspace’s audience continued to wither, in spite of changes at the company, internal and external. (Hey News Corp., is the site for sale yet?)
U.S. users spend more of their time on Facebook than any other destination, with 49.4 billion minutes being spent on the site for December 2010, up 79 percent from 27.6 billion a year before. Total page views for the month grew 71 percent from 44.9 billion in 2009 to 76.9 billion in 2010.
As far as demographics go, Facebook didn’t see many substantial shifts in what age groups use the site. Twitter, however, saw a 9.4 percent gain in 18-34 year olds using the site, making up 46.6 percent of the site’s visitors versus 37.3 percent a year ago. The 18 and under age range dipped 8.0 percent from 17.5 percent of Twitter’s visitors to just 9.5 percent.
More broadly, comScore found that women are widening the gap by increasingly using social networking sites more than men. Women spend 16.8 percent of their online time (one out of every six minutes) on social sites, versus 12.0 percent for men.
Now it's not very hard to imagine why advertising on Facebook is huge.
