Nielsen Presents the State of Social Media

NEW YORK -- Social networking is becoming a mainstay of Internet use, according to Nielsen and NM Incite’s new report, State of the Media: Social Media Report 2012.

Consumers continue to spend 20 percent of their PC time and 30 percent of their mobile time on social media sites, more than websites in any other category. According to the study, PC and mobile device users visited social media sites for a combined total of 121 billion minutes in July 2012, a 37-percent increase from 88 billion in July 2011.

In the same time period, Facebook was the most-visited social network in the United States with 152.2 million PC visitors, a 4-percent loss year to year. Blogger came in second with 58.5 million visitors, representing a 3-percent loss. Meanwhile, Twitter grew by 13 percent to more than 37 million visitors, while Pinterest boasted the largest year-over-year change: 27.2 unique visitors, which represented growth of 1,047 percent across PC and mobile platforms.

The Nielsen/NM Incite study also found correlation between the proliferation of mobile devices and the continued growth of social media, citing a 63-percent increase in social media mobile Web and mobile application use in 2012.