Consumers spent more than five and a half hours on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in Dec, 2009, according to a report by Nielsen. The amount of time spent on social media sites has increased by 82% from the same time last year, when users only spent three hours on social media sites each day.
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A new white paper, published by Merkle Inc., suggests that social media users are more likely to check their email inboxes than people who do not use social media. The study, conducted in Fall 2009, had several interesting findings. While many reports have suggested that Facebook and other social networks are replacements to email, this report would suggest that users are much more likely to use both products together.
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Repeated censorship of foreign-owned social networks like Twitter and Facebook by the Chinese government may be a large part of the reason that local Chinese networks are gaining in popularity among the millions of internet users in the country. Along with the recent threat by Google to pull its search from China altogether, there are indicators that Chinese internet users will be isolated from the networks and websites that European and North American users access most.
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Caresquare launched last year as a social site that connects child care professionals with parents. The site’s differentiating factor is it’s social approach to its system, connecting professionals and parents directly. Though Caresquare launched in the midst of several other established sites that offer similar services, Caresquare has made several changes to its site in order to become more competitive. Below is an interview with Caresquare’s Ariel Ford, who speaks on some of these changes:
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Online brand advertising measurement system Vizu has teamed up with three other ad companies that deal specifically with brand advertisement within social networks. AdNectar, Buddy Media and Lotame are all using Vizu’s Ad Catalyst brand ad measurement system to extend the feature set of their own products. Given the social media directives of these other ad companies, there’s a reason they’ve all chosen Vizu’s Ad Catalyst system.

The ads used in social networks are decidedly different from those found on other sites, and as ads continue to evolve within the social media realm, the way in which a brand marketing success is measured must change with time as well. That’s where Vizu comes in.
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A new pact for discouraging cyber-bullying and predatory behavior on social networks has been signed by seventeen social networking sites that have a presence in Europe, including MySpace, Bebo, Dailymotion, YouTube, and Habbo Hotel, reports Reuters. The European Commission is hoping such widespread adoption of the pact will make the Internet a safer place for children. The announcement comes on the heels of MySpace revealing its successful blocking of 90,000 registered sex offenders, some of which were later found on Facebook. And Facebook appears to be missing from this new EU pact as well, though both MySpace and Facebook have their own initiatives with state and federal authorities in the United States for the protection of their users.

Some of the concessions participating networks can make as part of the pact include auto private profiles for users under the age of 18, making them not searchable on the networks or the search engines, as well as more reporting options for users that feel others are acting maliciously in some way.
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Some web trends do eventually translate into mobile web usage.  According to a comScore report this week, the use of mobile social networking is driving mobile Internet usage in Western Europe (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK).  In November, 34% of mobile phone owners in Western Europe that visited social networking sites accessed social media, but not other mobile web content.  That means that a good portion of the 12.1 million mobile users in Western Europe are using their mobile web access just for social networking purposes.

Compared to other applications for accessing mobile web pages, social network mobile access grew at a much faster rate, clocking in at 152% increase between November 2007 and November 2008.  As far as the Western Europe countries go, the UK has the highest penetration of mobile social networking, at 9%.
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Social networking isn’t just for the youngsters anymore. It’s for the young at heart. According to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report, the share of adult Internet users on social networks has more than quadrupled in the past four years. From 8% to 35%, that’s a huge leap in terms of the adoption rate for using online social networks. And this number also means that adults represent a larger amount of users than the 65% of online teens who also use social networks, making the influence of adults on social networks significant and on the rise.
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Ah, the perils of social networking. The public nature of a social networking profile such as those seen on MySpace means that one must be careful what they post online. Stacy Snyder, a former student at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, learned that the hard way. As a student-teacher, Snyder was working at a high school where she ran into a bit of trouble, receiving poor reviews for unprofessionalism in the classroom.
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Oxyweb has posted a chart of the largest social networks throughout the world. The chart is a world map with the each country being colored based on the largest social network in that country. The most significant takeaway from this chart is that Facebook is rapidly obtaining global dominance. The largest competitor on a global level is hi5.

On an individual country basis, Facebook has fierce competition from StudiVZ in Germany, Xiaonei in China, V Kontakte (a Facebook copycat) in Russia, and a few other social networks each with a strong local presence. The chart doesn’t provide much insight outside of that but it definitely is a pretty picture with a basic level of insight for the global social network presence.

I am personally impressed with the reach of Facebook. According to the article, Facebook overtook hi5 in the Bahamas and Cuba. Currently, hi5 dominates Central America and part of South America. Between hi5 and Orkut, Facebook will have some fierce battles in the western hemisphere. Both hi5 and Facebook appear to be the primary competitors for global dominance.

It will be interesting to see how this chart changes 6 months from now. Facebook is on track to overtake MySpace domestically, but it won’t be anytime in the immediate future as MySpace has almost 20 million more monthly visitors domestically than Facebook. The site continues to gain ground though and as Mashable pointed out yesterday, Facebook hit 39 million monthly visitors last month according to Nielsen Online.

Click on the chart below to see the full-scale version.