The overall use of social media shows no signs of letting up, as internet users are causing the total amount of social traffic on the web to continue to skyrocket. Earlier today came the release of Nielsen’s 2012 Social Media Report, and in it we can see that social is doing just as well as everyone was hoping it would be. The numbers in the report show that, with the coming of more innovative technology, comes more traffic to social networks. However, what may be the most significant data from the report is the amount of time that internet users are now spending on social media sites, creating much higher amounts of unique visitors to the most popular networks in the marketing community.
The recent proliferation of mobile devices and connectivity helped fuel the continued growth of social media. While the computer remains as the predominant device for social media access, consumers’ time spent with social media on mobile apps and the mobile web has increased 63 percent in 2012, compared to the same period last year.
Mobile devices have been growing in prominence since their beginnings, and even since last year their impact on social media use has increased greatly. The average time spent on social networks by internet users this year was 121.18 minutes, as opposed to last year’s average which was only 88.48 minutes. So, as is made clear by the change in averages, the growth of social is occurring quickly and steadily. Social networks are becoming a very prominent reason for consumers to use the web these days, and have been forecasted to soon catch up to search as the most useful advertising platform.
Facebook, of course, remains at the top of the list of social networks, by unique visitors. The site, at the time of the report, had a total of 152,226 unique visitors. Just below Facebook are Blogger, with 58,518 unique visitors and Twitter with 37,033. For Twitter, that is a 13% increase from 2011, which is no surprise as it is well known that Twitter has grown greatly in popularity this year.
As for mobile’s impact, the mobile web has increased 82% in total unique users since 2011, and the use of mobile apps by U.S mobile users is up 85% since last year. While these increase, desktop use has gone down 4%, which is not too significant, but is some small evidence of the ever growing use of mobile in today’s digital society.
Both mobile and social are becoming what marketers see as the only way to advertise today, and with their growth, more opportunity shines. As long as these two marketing platforms continue to grow, they will have no problem in becoming the most influential ways to advertise within a few years. The social world has become digitalized, and seeing that change in any way is unlikely at this point, as the emergence of mobile in society has only strengthened a digital way of life.
