Facebook leads the pack here not in only in terms of number of users active but also with regards to the number of hours spent on the site. The total number of minutes spent on Facebook surged 700 percent year-on-year to 13.9 bn in April this year from 1.7 bn.
However, it is Twitter who took the cake home really, the time spent on the popular microblog rose by as much as 3700 percent compared to last year. This firmly places the reason why many think Twitter will change the way live, for it is actually gaining momentum in terms of usage, but that’s on a different tangent to this post and so we will talk about it later.
These numbers were presented in a Nielsen Report that came out some while back. Some other points to note and social networks mentioned include Blogger, Tagged.com and Myspace. Together these sites formed the 5 most active social networking platforms on the web (though not really in that order). MySpace came second with 4.71 bn minutes which is a sharp 31 percent dip compared to last year when it was the number 1 social network. Blogger and Tagged followed it while Twitter despite its voluminous growth was 5th in the list.
This raises some important points, for one it shows that MySpace is losing ground and losing ground fast despite being the second most active social site, it still remains popular but it’s sliping away. On the other hand Twitter with its huge growth percentage still came in 5th behind tagged and a full blogging platform like blogger, which just means it still has a wide user base left to target and that the user base and the time spent are bound to increase further for the popular tool.
What does this mean for marketers and social network owners?
This information relays quite a lot of possibilities that marketers can take home really. On one hand it justfies the importance of acknowledging the huge presence of sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. and studying them further on how to tap in to their TG on these sites. For Facebook itself, it needs to devise newer ways in which it can let brands communicate with their audience. Having a brand page and ads to get users on them won’t be enough when people are spending so much time on the site because they become blind to ads and blatant promotions.
On the other hand, these numbers suggest the rise and fall of social networks in very good manner. MySpace around this time last year was very well ahead of Facebook and there were quite a few other platforms which had users attention. This means that these landscapes change very quickly, meaning Facebook might not be on top next year. Esecially when people spend so much time on a site, it can lead to fatigue and a need for change, (Facebook however does keep changing itself) giving opportunities for other networks to take a shot at gaining users.
Anyway, on a concluding note, according to the report Social networking as a whole has been on a roll with the total time spent on social networking sites increasing to 81 percent compared to a year earlier.
