• A new study done by Nielsen shows that Internet users are spending an average of over 6 hours a month on social networking sites. The renowned market research firm tracks new media and business trends. It has released the latest set of statistics that summarize the Internet users’ habits, particularly in the US. Consumers now largely turn to social media to check and share views on different products/services, according to another study done by PwC. Here are some important findings to give you an idea of what’s happening in the online world:

1. Consumers in the US are now spending more time on the Internet. The Nielsen report states that a significant chunk of time spent on the Internet is Social in nature. It concludes that platforms like MySpace, Twitter and Facebook continue to hold sway.

2. As mentioned above, in May 2010, the Internet user spent more than 6 hours a month on these websites, in comparison to 3 and a half hours, during May last year. The average US worker spent more than 5 hours visiting online social networks from the office, each month.

3. Of all active Internet-enabled households in the US, close to 75% visited a social networking platform in May. About one-fifth of adult users now publish or run a blog on their own. More than 50% of them have one or more social networking profiles.

4. They spend one in roughly every four & a half minutes of their time online on popular social networks or blogs. Web users, in the aggregate, spend 110 billion minutes on these sites as well as blogs each month. In fact, activities like commenting, blogging, messaging, and sharing make up for not less than 22 percent of total time spent by users online each month. Twenty percent of those surveyed provide opinions about movies, whereas 18% share their thoughts about television shows; nearly 16% often offer tips on music.

5. According to the Nielsen report, more than 82 percent of the Internet users globally visit Google each month. They spend an average of 1 minute and 20 seconds to navigate and search. Facebook leads in terms of time spent online globally. Others making it to the list of top 10 most visited sites are MSN, Bing, AOL, eBay, Yahoo, and Apple.

6. According to a PwC estimate, the digital transformation is expected to propel the entertainment & media sector to a sizable revenue stream of $1.7 trillion in the year 2014, in comparison to $1.3 trillion last year, comprising Internet advertising, game and music downloads as well as satellite radio subscriptions. The US is expected to spend $558 billion by then versus just $460 billion in 2009.  This is bound to create an upsurge in advertising spends on the huge target audience. 

Marcel Fenez, global leader (Entertainment and Media practice) at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), stated: “The usage of the Internet has become a great unifying experience, which is shared by billions across the world. It’s causing a parallel trend with the ‘re-socialization’ of the media consumption experience.”

In essence, the potent combination of digital access, social networking, and mobility is seeing consumption of different forms of media migrate from being an isolated activity towards becoming an all-encompassing social experience.