Facebook More Popular Than Any Other Website--By A Lot: Nielsen

The Web has a winner: Facebook.

According to new research from Nielsen's "The Social Media Report," American Internet users now devote more time to Facebook than any other website, spending a total of 53.5 billion minutes a month on the world's largest social networking site.

This is far ahead of sites like Blogger, to which Americans cumulatively devote 723 million minutes a month, Twitter, which receives 565 million minutes of users' time per month and LinkedIn, on which claims 325 million minutes per month. Yahoo, the second most popular web brand overall, receives just half as much time of users' time as Facebook (Americans spent 17.2 billion minutes on the site), followed by Google (12.5 billion minutes, which does not include the 9.1 billion minutes people spent on YouTube).

Facebook announced earlier this year that it had surpassed 750 million users and Google's DoubleClick ad planner reported that Facebook had reached 1 trillion monthly page views, a disputed number that one analytics company pegged closer to 467 billion.

Yet Nielsen gave the blog platform Tumblr the equivalent of a nod for "most likely to succeed," noting that the "emerging social network" increased grew its audience three-fold in a year. Tumblr also recently celebrated its 10 billionth post, just a year after reaching its 1 billionth.

Nielsen's report tracked both the popularity of social networking sites, as well as usage patterns among Americans online.

Users devote more time to social media and blogs than to online games, email and search combined, Nielsen found: 22.5 percent of the time people spend online is given over to sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Blogger; 9.8 percent is spent playing games online; 7.6 is spent on email; and 4 percent on search.

Though social networking apps are the third most popular mobile application category, behind games and weather-related apps, 37 percent of users said they consume social media via their phones--by comparison, a full 97 percent use their PCs.

The research also found some notable differences in the ways varying demographics use social media sites. Women, who Nielsen said "make up the majority of visitors to social networks and blogs," and users between 18 and 34 years-old were highlighted as the "most active social networkers."

Women account for 62 percent of Facebook's page views, Nielsen wrote, adding that men are "more likely to visit LinkedIn and Wikia." Female Internet users also watch more online videos than men, but men spend more time (247 million minutes per month) watching video online than women (226 million minutes per month).

Social networking users make up a lion's share of all adults online. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project's August 2011 report, for the first time, more than half of all adult Internet users (65 percent) now use social networks.

Read Nielsen's full report--which includes more on mobile usage, how active social networkers behave online, and much more--here.

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Comments

[Carlos CeeCee]

12:30 PM on 09/16/2011

The world has gone Facebook Mad!

[cuoi]

01:51 PM on 09/14/2011

Marijuana is the #1 most used illicit drug. I wonder if there is a connection...

[Prasad Sistla]

11:58 AM on 09/14/2011

Yeah FB is being the cool site, so no doubt its being voted or ranked No.1

[Dick Pickle]

08:34 AM on 09/14/2011

Never been there and never done that. Too many privacy and security issues at stake. The only one that needs to know what I am up to every damn minute of my life is ME!

[jacmed]

01:12 PM on 09/14/2011

Hear, hear, Dick -- me, too, with one exception. I did go on FB because a granddaughter asked me to so I could get her wedding pictures. But by the time I went on, she was so disgusted with FB that she had already opted out. However, after signing up and finding I could not get to the pictures, I remained on FB to try to see what was so special about it. In less than 1/2 hours, three people whom I had hoped to never see or hear from again wanted to "friend" me! That was it! I opted out and refuse to go back -- ever! P.S. My granddaughter mailed me a DVD with the pictures!

[Dick Pickle]

04:21 PM on 09/14/2011

Well good for you jacmed! I was never raised nor do I see the necessity to inform the rest of the world as to what I am doing every minute of my rather hum-drum life. I do not get this obsession that contemporary people have to feel that they need to keep their 'friends' apprised as to what they are up to. If you want to, then pick up the telephone and give me a ringie-dingie! Color me old fashioned, but it still works for me. I don't even own a cell phone to this day. Never have! Cherrs!

[senor pedro]

01:14 PM on 09/13/2011

that's because "flipboard" is yet to be discovered by the masses

[Make It Grow]

12:30 AM on 09/13/2011

I prefer Big Juggs .com

[sloreader]

12:49 AM on 09/13/2011

In your Facebook? lol.

[Kisha Chapman]

11:03 PM on 09/12/2011

I happen to love my Facebook and I don't care if you don't like it. This is also my status update on facebook ;-)

[sloreader]

12:49 AM on 09/13/2011

Filing under whatever.

[Sherri Gordon Garner]

12:50 PM on 09/14/2011

I love Facebook,plain and simple

[jukesgrrl]

12:09 AM on 09/15/2011

I wonder if you'll say that after you get your first stalker.

[Anthony Dodd]

10:08 PM on 09/12/2011

STOP SHOVING THIS NEWSIE CRAP DOWN OUR MODEMS!!!

[foxisms]

10:15 PM on 09/12/2011

Accordingly, Perry is most electable and Facebook is most popular.
Anthony, I guess we just gotta get with it! And someone is trying their best to spoon feed it to us.

[Anthony Dodd]

11:55 PM on 09/12/2011

Right?

"We'll use jailbait with lipstick -- it works for FOX!"

[JustinP213]

09:20 PM on 09/12/2011

We Americans love to waste time.

[Lollipop10]

08:04 PM on 09/13/2011

Most Americans work their butts off..........and deserve to 'waste' a little time......We have to keep the lazies who do not work..

[JustinP213]

09:13 AM on 09/14/2011

I wish that were the case...

[hypnotoad72]

09:13 PM on 09/12/2011

How much did Apple pay to get the image of the MacBook on the "And The Most Popular Website (By A Lot) Is..." headline I clicked on?

Usually, logos are shrouded unless the company ponies up advertising fees. 

Unless HP is paying Apple?

[opprobrious]

08:58 PM on 09/12/2011

That's only because there's only one Facebook and an infinite number of porn sites.

[NyJimbo]

10:12 PM on 09/12/2011

"....and an infinite number of porn sites. "

and almost all of them are free. America, what a country !

[Lollipop10]

08:05 PM on 09/13/2011

You are always free to move out of America...........

[plaidlemur]

07:49 PM on 09/12/2011

12.8 minutes per day per US user (138.9 million unique visitors per month from US). It's certainly ubiquitous, but that's probably not far off from how much total time a user may spend checking and writing personal emails per day. I wouldn't be surprised if this per day minutes number is shrinking at a substantial rate, especially considering the shrinking user base in North America.

Not saying the numbers aren't staggering and impressive, but Facebook's true impact seems to have been when it had 20-50 million users, many of who were staring bleary eyed at the screen for hours upon hours a day. The concept was novel (to the users) then, and although the revenue model wasn't as efficient, the site had more impact on users' lives. I'm skeptical about the ability of the site to stay relevant for another five years.

[eric14]

08:01 PM on 09/12/2011

Is the product life cycle applicable here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_life_cycle_management_(marketing)

Facebook may be moving from stage 3 to 4?

[plaidlemur]

08:28 PM on 09/12/2011

Yeah--it's a little tougher to neatly fit web based services into the product life cycle (or the service industry in general), however it's still applicable. I would use the tech adoption life cycle for this, personally (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle). The "Laggards" have adopted the service, while the innovators and early adopters left (or discontinued moderate to heavy use) for Twitter, Tumblr, and other services awhile ago.

Considering the success of Facebook, there will be more and more competition for early adopters, which may reduce the influence on the majority, which may (and may already be) delaying the move of individuals in the "early majority" away from Facebook and to other services. We'll see, but I can't see kids sticking around on Facebook when they find a grandparent's account (or constantly seeing other perceived laggards accounts, diminishing the desire to be part of the overall community).

[hommie]

07:49 PM on 09/12/2011

how is this news!!?

[Mr Carp]

07:45 PM on 09/12/2011

...and I dig the none-too-subtle promotion of Apple products again.

[hypnotoad72]

09:17 PM on 09/12/2011

I use a MacBook Pro, but I know enough of copyright law that when a logo is so prominently displayed, it's advertising.

On the television programs I look for, I can tell it's a MacBook by the case and design.  The glowing logo is  (at least sufficiently) shrouded so that the makers of the show don't have to pay royalties.

And the photo I clicked on was too poised, with the logo being smack in the middle. 

There is no way it was an image grabbed at random.

(Disclaimer: I use Macs but am not so much a fanboy as to be a sycophant)

[WebSloth]

04:08 PM on 09/14/2011

well a stock photo of a Cray really won't work now, will it?

[mikeyaz17]

07:39 PM on 09/12/2011

gross