Nielsen has released a new study on social media, as a preemptive move to secure their place as the arbiters of knowledge on the new digital data. The report, titled “State of the Media: The Social Media Report” it says that social media is the number two activity of Americans online taking up 22.5 percent, followed by 9.8 percent for online games and 7.6 percent for e-mail; the nebulous “other” category is number one, which includes shopping and visiting adult content.
“Social media is becoming increasingly mainstream,” said Radha Subramanyam, senior vice president for media and advertising insights and analytics at Nielsen in New York. “[As a result,] there’s a need for companies to engage even more strategically in the space [than they already do,]” she added.
Of social media, Facebook was by far the most used social media site. During the May month that the study was commissioned, Americans spent 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook.com; by contrast Blogger only saw 723.8 million minutes, Tumblr had 623.5 million minutes, Twitter 565.2 million minutes; and LinkedIn was at 325.7 million minutes.
“We’ve been seeing that for a while,” said Subramanyam said of the dominance of Facebook in the social media realm. The reason is simple, she added: “It’s an incredibly fun way to spend time.”
The study also revealed that Facebook reaches 70 percent of active Internet users in the U.S. and that 62 percent of the visitors to Facebook were female. The report added that more women than men watch video clips on blogs and social networks but that men stream more videos and spend more time watching them than women.
Source: New York Times
