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

Facebook Passes Yahoo To Become #2 Video Site In U.S.

TECH CRUNCH - Sep 30 - comScore just released its latest online video data in the U.S. for the month of August; showing that viewership remained steady since the previous month. 178M U.S. Internet users watched online video content in August for an average of 14.3 hours per viewer. YouTube.com took the top spot in terms of viewers, with 146.3M unique viewers. Facebook.com jumped one position to capture the #2 spot with 58.6M viewers. Yahoo came in third with 53.9M viewers, followed by VEVO with 45.4M.

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Twitter Passes MySpace To Become Third Most Trafficked Social Network

READ WRITE WEB - Sep 28 - Twitter has surpassed former social networking giant MySpace in unique visitors according to ComsCore. Twitter.com had ~96M unique visitors last month, up 76% from the same period last year. MySpace dropped 17% to 95M unique visitors, while Facebook easily sat in the lead with 598M unique visitors, up 54% from last year. The number two spot is occupied by Microsoft's Windows Live Profile, with 140M unique visitors. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

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One Fourth Of Adults in the U.S. Use Mobile Apps

MASHABLE - Sep 14 - According to the Pew Internet Project, 82% of U.S. Adults are active cellphone users, and 43% of those have downloaded apps to their phones. This equates to 24% of the adults in the United States. Of these users, 13% have paid for at least one of their apps. Not surprisingly, games are the most popular downloads. Also of note, women favor social networking apps significantly more than men. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

How Tweens & Teens Use Social Media Report

PRESS RELEASE - Sep 10 - It costs little or nothing to set up a Facebook or Twitter account that can effectively reach tweens, teens, and young adults. Yet relatively few youth-oriented brands have done so. This new report, How Tweens & Teens Use Social Media gives you both sides of the equation: How tweens, teens, and young adults interact with social media on the one hand, and what brands are doing to intercept their fragmented attention on the other.
Did you know that:
- 29% of Twitter users 18-24 years old use Twitter to follow their favorite companies
- 15-17 year old Internet users spend 19.9 hours a week online
- 54% of 13-14 year olds have Facebook pages

Learn how to develop compelling promotions that integrate social networks. Click here for more information.

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60% Of Web Users Visit Social Networks

PC ADVISOR - Sep 8 - Visitors to pcadvisor.co.uk were asked which social networks they use. Facebook was the runaway leader, with 31.9% of votes cast. This represents a 4.4 % from Jan 2009 when PC Advisor conducted the same poll. Facebook was followed this time around by Twitter in a distant second (8.7%, up from 3.8%), Friends Reunited (6%) and LinkedIn (4.8%). MySpace came fifth, with 2.8%of the votes. In 2009 it collected 7.1% of votes. FULL ARTICLE @ PC ADVISOR

Facebook Marketing Misses The Mark

REUTERS - Aug 30 - Although social networking usage among the 65+ population is up 100%, Facebook only lets ads be targeted for ages 64 and under. Ignoring the over-65 demographic might be excusable if the recent Pew Internet and American Life Project results were a revelation, but the popularity of Facebook among seniors is actually old news. A Nielsen study in November of 2009 found that Facebook had jumped from the no.45 most used site among seniors to no.3. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS

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Facebook Overtakes Orkut In India: comScore

IBN LIVE - Aug 25 - India, one of the few countries where Orkut retained the top spot amongst social networks, now has more people logging on to Facebook, says comScore. Facebook grabbed the no.1 ranking in the social networking category for the first time in July with 20.9M visitors, up 179% versus year ago. Orkut registered a growth of only 16% in the same time period. FULL ARTICLE @ IBN LIVE

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comScore Releases July 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings

PRESS RELEASE - Aug 17 - ComScore is showing that 178M U.S. Internet users watched online video content during July for an average of 14.7 hours per viewer. Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property with 143.2M unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 55.1M viewers. Facebook.com jumped one position to capture the #3 spot with 46.6M viewers. Americans viewed ~3.6 billion video ads in July, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at 783M.

Twitter Still Grew 109% In June

TECH CRUNCH - Aug 11 - According to ComScore, ~93M Internet users visited Twitter.com in June, an increase of 109% from the previous year. It seems that the network is seeing increased traffic from international markets, particularly in Asia and South America. Indonesia reported the highest traffic, with 20.8% of Internet users in the country visiting Twitter.com that month, followed by Brazil and Venezuela. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Social Networking Costs UK Economy Billions

EWEEK EUROPE - Aug 6 - Social networks are potentially costing the British economy up to £14 billion a year in lost working time, accoding to a new survey from job sites network MyJobGroup.co.uk. Its survey of 1,000 people found that ~6% are spending over an hour each day on social media whilst at work. The survey also revealed that 55% of the UK’s working population now accesses social media whilst at work. FULL ARTICLE @ EWEEK EUROPE

FarmVille, Other Online Social Games Mean Big Business, And Bonding

WASHINGTON POST - Aug 3 - More than 200M people play social games every month, and the numbers grow by the thousands every day. Online games just passed e-mail as the second-most popular activity online, behind social networking, according to Nielsen. Last week, Disney paid $563.2M to buy social game developer Playdom. Google is reportedly in talks with game companies to start a site called Google Games, having noticed that on Facebook, 40% of the company's 500M users regularly play social games. Many players are using games such as FarmVille and Scrabble to make new friends. For Facebook and the gaming companies, the business opportunity is enormous, even though playing the games is free. Users can buy add-ons and move through game levels faster by spending a dollar here, 50c there on what amount to nothing more than virtual objects on a screen. Analysts predict more than $835M in such transactions this year. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST

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Americans Spend A Quarter Of Their Online Time On Social Networks

PRESS RELEASE - Aug 2 - According to latest Nielsen research Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networks and blogs, up from 15.8% a year ago (43% increase). Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks - accounting for 10% of all US Internet time. Email dropped from 11.5% of time to 8.3%. FULL ARTICLE @ FIERCE MOBILE CONTENT

SNS Reach A Higher Percentage Of Women Than Men Worldwide

PRESS RELEASE - July 28 - comScore released a global report on women’s online usage titled, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet, which provides an in-depth analysis of the female Internet user, highlighting key trends by Internet activity, worldwide region and digital channel. The report found that social networks reach a higher percentage of women than men globally, with 75.8% of all women online visiting a social network in May 2010 versus 69.7% of men. Women spend 30% more time on SNS than men. FULL ARTICLE @ COMSCORE

50% Of Employees Ignore Company Policy On Social Networking

VISAGEMOBILE - July 27 - According to Cisco’s 2010 mid-year security report ~ 50% of end-users ignore company policy on social media access and 27% said they knowingly alter settings on their corporate devices to access restricted apps. FULL ARTICLE @ VISAGEMOBILE

Mobile App Store Downloads To Hit 25 Billion By 2015

TECH CRUNCH - Jul 20 - According to a Juniper Research report out today, the number of “consumer-oriented handset downloads” is expected to rise from less than 2.6 billion per-year in 2009 to more than 25 billion in 2015. The trend, notes the report, is being driven by industry players who are seeking to emulate Apple’s success with the App Store by launching their own branded storefronts, such as ‘Mobile Market’ from China Unicom, ‘Airtel App Central’ from Bharti and the ‘Apps & Games Shop’ on Vodafone 360. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

Social Media Sites As Annoying To U.S. Customers As Cable Providers

TECH CRUNCH - July 19 - A new study by ForeSee Results and the American Customer Satisfaction Index finds that U.S. consumers regard social media sites Facebook and Myspace as lowly as they regard cable providers, airlines and the I.R.S. On a 0-100 point scale, Facebook scored 64 points but Wikipedia scored 77. YouTube scored 73, and MySpace scored 63. By way of comparison, Netflix ranks at 87. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

Gay And Lesbian Adults Are More Avid Blog Readers, SNS Users

TECH CRUNCH - July 13 - A new national survey carried out by market research firm Harris Interactive suggests gay and lesbian adults online today are among the most loyal and most frequent blog readers and social network users in the United States. More than half (54%) of gay men and lesbian respondents report reading some type of blog, compared to only 40% of heterosexuals. This represents an increase from March 2008, when 51% of gay and lesbian respondents reported reading some type of blog. 73% of gay and lesbian adults can be found on Facebook, compared to 65% of heterosexual adults. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

Loopt Hits 4 Million Users

TECH CRUNCH - July 9 - While Foursquare is just shy of 2M users, other services like MyTown have quickly surpassed that number. Same with Google Latitude, which is at 3M. And you can put Loopt on that list as well, as today they’ve hit 4M total users. Loopt was one of the first location-based services to get a lot of hype. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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