Online Communities Gain in Popularity

Posted on by Chief Marketer Staff

Online member communities have gained popularity, even outpacing e-mail.

The communities, which include both social networks and blogs, are now the fourth most popular online category visited by 67% of the global online population, according to new research by Nielsen Online.

The communities are growing twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors—search, portals, PC software and e-mail.

“Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience,” John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, said in a release. “While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing. Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large.”

The report also found that Facebook, which is the world’s most popular social network, is visited monthly by three in every 10 people online across the nine markets in which Nielsen tracks social networking use. Orkut in Brazil has the largest domestic online reach (70%) of any social network in these markets.

Other findings include:

* One in every 11 minutes online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites.

* The social network and blogging audience is becoming more diverse in terms of age: the biggest increase in visitors during 2008 to member community Web sites globally came from the 35 to 49 year old age group (+11.3 million).

* Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking. Nielsen found UK mobile Web users have the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23% (2 million people) doing so, compared to 19% in the US (10.6 million people). These numbers are a big increase over last year—up 249% in the UK and 156 percent in the US.

“Social networking isn’t just growing rapidly, it’s evolving—both in terms of a broader audience and compelling new functionality,” Alex Burmaster, author of the study and communications director across EMEA for Nielsen Online, said in a release “We felt compelled to analyze the state of the social networking market globally and consider what implications this has for our publisher and advertiser clients.”

Among the markets Nielsen measured, penetration of visits to social networks and blogs was highest in Brazil, where 80% of the online audience visits such sites. The share of overall Internet time for which social networks and blogs account is also highest in Brazil, where nearly one in four (23%) of minutes spent online is spent on these sites.

Germany saw the greatest increase in penetration of social networks and blogs across 2008, from 39% of the online audience in December 2007 to 51% in December 2008—a relative growth of 39%.

The Nielsen Co.’s “Global Faces and Networked Places,” report can be found online.

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