Social Networking Watch: News on the Social Networking and Social Media Industry

Social Network Ad Revenues to Reach $10B in 2013

EMARKETER - Oct 5 - Social network ad revenues are projected to reach $10 billion worldwide in 2013, with half of the total coming from the U.S. market. Revenues this year will reach $5.54 billion. By 2013, non-U.S. revenues are expected to increase 51.9%.

See full article at eMarketer

Which Countries Use Social Networks the Most? [Study]

READ WRITE WEB - Sep 30 - Experian Hitwise found that Brazil and Singapore are the top two countries for overall social networking use. But Facebook is not the network on which Brazilians are spending their time. They're using Orkut, owned by Google. Orkut owns 43% of the social networking market in Brazil, but it's losing ground to Facebook. Orkut fell by 18% since last year, while Facebook gained by 16%. 
Market share for social networks and forums:

   1. Brazil -- 18.9%
   2. Singapore -- 16.4%
   3. U.S. -- 15.4%
   4. India -- 14.0%
   5. New Zealand -- 13.9%
   6. France -- 15.1%
   7. Australia -- 13.1%
   8. U.K. -- 12.2%

by Jon Mitchell
See full article at Read Write Web

Mobile Social Networking 2011-2016

PR NEWSWIRE - Sep 26 - A new market research report Mobile Social Networking 2011-2016 is available. The report examines the rapidly growing market of social networking on mobile devices. It provides growth forecasts, market sizing and analysis of the latest developments in this sector.

See full article at PR Newswire

Women Dominate Men at Social Networking

MASHABLE - Sep 22 - Women use social networks to connect with their friends, family and colleagues more than men, finds a new survey fielded by Rebtel. Here are the highlights of the study. 

- 68% of women and 54% of men use social media to stay in touch with their friends.
- 75% of men and 73% of women use voice/phone to stay in touch with their friends.
  
The survey polled 2,361 U.S. adults over age 18 between May 17 to 19.

by Zoe Fox
See full article at Mashable

Japanese Women Going Gaga Over Video Dating Games

TOKYO TIMES - Sep 21- Female-oriented video games such as “otome” by Gree are the hottest thing for Japanese women. The video-game market in Japan already has a figure of $10.6 billion. An analyst says the market for female-oriented video games could amount to 20 billion yen ($26M) for the next five years.

See full article at Tokyo Times

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Americans Spend 23% of Internet Time on Social Networks

MASHABLE - Sep 13 - Americans spend almost a quarter of their time online on social networking sites, according to Nielsen. The most popular social network is Facebook, followed by Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter and LinkedIn. Nine of the 10 most popular social networks were dominated by women.

by Sarah Kessler
See full article at Mashable

Kantar Media Compete: Ranking of Top 250 Sites for July 2011

MARKETWIRE - Aug 29 - Among notable changes in July were drops in unique visitors to daily deal sites and soaring number of unique visitors hitting social networks. Groupon.com experienced an 8.9% drop to 30.6M unique visitors. Traffic also fell for Livingsocial.com, down 28% to 10.6M uniques. Facebook.com and Twitter.com both grew ~2.4% month-over-month (MOM), with Facebook increasing 17% YOY for a total of 149.8M uniquess and Twitter rising 12% YOY for a total of 32.4M uniques. Match.com attracted 16.1M unique visitors during July, a 19% increase MOM and 39 % rise YOY. Speeddate.com continued to demonstrate enviable growth in July, with a monthly increase of 34% and a lift of 669 % YOY.

See full article at Marketwatch

This article also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch and DailyDealsObserver.

Mobile Users Eager to Offer Their Location

TECH CRUNCH - Aug 17 - According to a new report from location-based media company JiWire, 53% of the “on-the-go” U.S. audience is willing to exchange their location in exchange for more relevant content and better information, including mobile deals. In the group of mobile consumers under the age of 34, the percentage is even greater: 60% are willing to trade their location for information.

by Sarah Perez
See full article at Tech Crunch

This post also appears on DailyDealsObserver.

Facebook Lures Lonely Russians

BLOOMBERG - Aug 5 - 53% of Russians now use the Internet, up from 39% last year. DST Global, a Russian Internet investment fund led by billionaire Yury Milner, has been expanding its interests in Russian and global social networks, including a recent $400M stake in Twitter. The holding also owns a stake in Facebook. The number of Russian-language Twitter users passed 1M last month. 46% of those surveyed by VTsIOM said social networks such as Facebook, Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki are the best places to meet new people online.

See full article at The Moscow Times

EU Prods Social Sites on Minors

WSJ - June 21 - The European Commission, which is still finding its way in regulating the Internet, Tuesday published a study on how social networks treat minors. 77% of 13-16-year-olds and 38% of 9-12-year-olds online use such sites. For its study, EU regulators examined 14 sites: Arto, Bebo, Facebook, Giovani.it, Hyves, Myspace, Nasza-klaza.pl, Netlog, One.lt, Rate.ee, SchülerVZ, IRC Galleria, Tuenti and Zap.lu. Among its findings: Nine sites (Arto, Bebo, Facebook, Giovani, Hyves, Netlog, One, Rate and SchuelerVZ) explain their policies in a “child-friendly” way. Only Bebo, MySpace, Netlog and SchuelerVZ prevent minors from being messaged by people outside their list of previously-approved contacts.

by John W. Miller
See full article at WSJ

Time Spent on Mobile Apps Has Surpassed Web Browsing

TECH CRUNCH - June 20 - According to mobile app analytics firm Flurry, the average user now spends 9% more time using mobile apps than the Internet. In June users spent an average of 81 minutes daily on mobile apps, compared to 74 minutes on the web. This compares to 66 minutes on mobile apps daily in December of 2010, and 70 minutes spent daily on the web. Games and Social Networking categories dominate, capturing 47% and 32% on consumer time spent daily, respectively.

by Leena Rao
See full article at Tech Crunch

This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.

The Social Web and Its Implications Study

RESEARCH AND MARKETS - Jan 11 - Media is an “attention economy”; every product - book, television show, website, etc. - vies for attention, and tries to derive financial benefit from it – through advertising, subscription, etc. And, users' attention has become the scarce commodity. The word “viral” hardly existed in our vocabulary before social media. The Social Web is not just a fad; it is a fundamental shift in how humans communicate, interact, collaborate, create, inform themselves, prioritize, organize, buy, sell, and play. This market study is designed to help you understand this transformation, how it affects you and the world around you, and most important, how to use the changes it brings.

See full article at Research and Markets

It’s a Facebook World

TECH CRUNCH - June 13 - Twice a year (in June and in Decr), Vincenzo Cosenza creates a “world map of social networks”, showing the dominant social networks by country, based on traffic data gathered from Alexa and Google Trends for Websites. In June09, Facebook was already quite big. By Dec 10, the map colored bluer than ever. Facebook is now the ‘leader’ in 119 out of 134 countries Cosenza has analyzed. According to data from Facebook’s Ads Platform, Europe is now the largest continent on the network with ~205M.

by Robin Wauters
See full article at Tech Crunch

Internet Advertising Up 23% to $7.3Bn

MASHABLE - May 26 - According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, internet advertising revenues for Q1 2011 have hit a record setting $7.3 billion, which is an increase of 23% from Q1 2010. Online revenues for 2010 were $26 billion, an increase of 15% over 2009.

by Todd Wasserman
See full article at Mashable

With Mobile Commerce Comes Mobile Fraud

PRESS RELEASE - May 19 - According to a joint study from ThreatMetrix, the provider of cloud-based fraud prevention solutions, and Ponemon Institute, 37% of respondents feel most comfortable sharing their location information with banks, followed by a certified third party that monitors potential fraudsters (32%). The  March 2011 ThreatMetrix Cloud-Based Fraud Prevention stats found that mobile transactions were more likely to be fraudulent than web-based transactions. ThreatMetrix found that an average of 2% of worldwide transactions came from a mobile device, with the most originating in the U.S. (4%). When mobile transactions are broken down by industry, social networks top the list (5.4%), followed by alternative payments (2.5%) and e-commerce (2.4%).

See all posts on ThreatMetrix

comScore: Nearly 17M Mobile Subscribers Use Location-based Check-In Services

GPS WORLD - May 18 - A recent comScore study revealed that 16.7 million U.S. mobile subscribers use location-based check-in services on their phones in March 2011. This accounts for 7.1% of the entire mobile user population. Check-in service user demographics showed a heavy skew toward 18-24 year olds (26%) and 25-34 year olds (32.5%). Smartphone users accounted for 12.7 million of the 16.7 million in this segment.

by Janice Partyka
See full article at GPS World

Schools.com Launches Infographic Highlighting Professors’ Use Of Social Media

PRESS RELEASE - May 2 - Schools.com, an education website, has launched a new infographic that focuses on professors’ use of social media in higher education. In a recent survey of 2,000 faculty, Pearson researchers found that 80% incorporate social media into their teaching. Additionally, 90% utilize at least one social network for personal use. ~40% of professors are leveraging the YouTube platform to teach, while 30% use Facebook and 21% blog to better engage their students.  On the other hand, Twitter sees very little academic use – only 7% of professors currently use it.

U.S. Online Ad Revenue Hits Record High

CNET NEWS - Apr 14 - U.S. online advertising revenue has hit an all-time high, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported yesterday. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), online ad spending hit $26 billion last year in the U.S., representing a 15% gain YOY. In the fourth quarter alone, advertisers spent $7.45 billion on the Web, jumping 19% YOY. Search advertising continued to be the most popular choice among advertisers, totaling $12 billion last year. Advertisers spent $9.9 billion on "display-related" ads, including banners, sponsorships, and digital video commercials. Classifieds and directory ad spending hit $2.6 billion.

by Don Reisinger
See full article at CNET News