I always had the perception that Americans are the most active social media users because Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are all based in the United States. However, a recent study by Nielsen proved me wrong. Apparently, Australians spend the most amount of time on social media websites as compared to any other people in the world for the month of December. Analysts at Nielsen have concluded that 9.9 million Australians on average spend nearly 7 hours per month on social media sites. This translates to a 13 minutes a day, which constitutes to 0.9% of our time everyday.
Meanwhile, the United States clinched the second placing with Americans spending an average of 6 hours and 9 minutes per month, followed by the United Kingdom (6 hours and 7 minutes), and then Italy (6 hours). To my dismay, Japan, which is one of the most technological-savvy countries in the world, only managed to hit 2 hours and 50 minutes, far behind the Oceania, American and European leaders. On the hand, Brazil, the only developing country in the list, made it to the sixth placing with 31.3 million Brazilians surfing Facebook and Twitter for 4 hours and 33 minutes in December last year.
The study also noted that Americans continue to spend more time on social networking and blog sites as well, with total minutes increasing 210% year-over-year and the average time per person increasing 143% year-over-year in December 2009. The top five most popular social media sites in December are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Classmates and LinkedIn. Among these sites, Twitter has been touted as “the fastest-growing in December 2009 in terms of unique visitors”, increasing 579% year-over-year, from 2.7 million unique visitors in December 2008 to 18.1 million in December 2009.
