Any parent can vouch that time spent on social-networking sites is rapidly growing, but a new report puts some numbers on that perception. The report, released Wednesday by Nielsen Online, indicates that the total minutes spent on such sites have increased 83 percent in the U.S. alone, year over year.
The report, which covers the month of April, shows that the overall leader in total minutes, Facebook, grew an astounding 699 percent– 13.9 billion minutes this April, compared to 1.7 billion minutes in April last year.
‘Remember Friendster?’
The number-two site, MySpace, saw a 31 percent drop, while Twitter has rocketed up to sixth place with 3,712 percent growth.
Jon Gibs, online media vice president at Nielsen online, said the report indicated “regardless of how fast a site is growing or how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor” with users.
“Remember Friendster?” he asked, mentioning a social-networking site that isn’t in this year’s top 10. “Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force?”
He added that Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t take their positions for granted, since consumers have clearly shown that “they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment’s notice.”
The report also showed that while Facebook remains in the top position for unique visitors and total minutes for the fourth month straight, MySpace is the leader in online video. In terms of number of streams and total minutes watching video, MySpace’s visitors spent 384 million minutes watching more than 120 million streams, for nearly 39 minutes per visitor.
Because of this disparity in the kinds of leads different sites have, Gibs said it might be better not to ask who is winning, but “what audiences are they drawing, and how are they building for the future” to maintain the loyalty…