Facebook outranks email as the No. 1 time-waster while online.
…as the top activity spent online when it comes to goofing around.
An article in Information Week says that 40% of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities — social networking, playing games, and e-mailing.
According to a Nielsen study, which the article sites, U.S. Internet users spent 22.7% of their time on social networking sites — up 43% from the 15.8% they spent in 2009, the research firm found. By comparison, Americans are dedicating fewer hours to e-mail: In this year’s report, users spent 8.3% of their online time reading and sending missives, down almost 28% from last year’s 11.5%, Nielsen said in its Aug. 1 report, “What Americans Do Online.”
What might be most surprising, however, is that users of all ages are adopting to social networking. Double the number of Americans ages 50 and older are visiting more social networking sites than the under-18 age group. The report tracked 200,000 users in June 2010.
Facebook dominates its category, with 85% of social networking done on its site, the report found. On average, users spend six hours per month on the site. By comparison, users spend 5.6% of their social networking time on its closest competitor, MySpace. Twitter and Blogger each received only 1.1% of social networking use.
This leads to the question that if people are checking their social media sites so frequently anyways…should they start knocking out two birds with one stone and begin social media marketing?
