Time spent on social media surges to highest rates ever

By IBTimes Staff Reporter | January 22 2010 3:06 PM

Consumers spent more than five hours on social networking sites in December, representing an 82 percent jump over the previous year, marking the longest consumption times on record.

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Globally, social networks and blogs are the most popular online category when ranked by average time spent in December, followed by online games and instant messaging, according to Neilsen.

With 206.9 million unique visitors, Facebook was the No. 1 global social networking destination in December 2009 and 67 percent of global social media users visited the site during the month.

Time on site for Facebook has also been on the rise, with global users spending nearly six hours per month on the site.

People in the U.S. continue to spend more time on social networking and blog sites as well, with total minutes increasing 210% year-over-year and the average time per person increasing 143% year-over-year in

December 2009. Year-over-year growth in average time spent by U.S. users, for both Facebook and Twitter.com, outpaced the overall growth for the category, increasing 200 percent and 368 percent, respectively.

Among, the top five U.S. social networking sites, Twitter.com continued its reign as the fastest-growing in December 2009 in terms of unique visitors, increasing 579 percent year-over-year, from 2.7 million unique visitors in December 2008 to 18.1 million in December 2009.

However, month-over-month, unique visitors decreased 5 percent.