Network knockout
Social media has become the single biggest activity online in the UK overtaking the Entertainment category, according to new research.
It seems there is no end to the growth of social networking sites and Experian Hitwise has found that for the first time ever users visit social media sites more than any other type of website.
In a report called Carpe Diem - Seizing the moment in Social Media, the company said that social networks accounted for 12.4 percent of all UK Internet visits in January 2011
It monitors 9,000 social networks and said there were over 2.4bn visits from UK internet users to these sites during January; more than in any other month on record.
The report demonstrates how fast social networks are continuing to grow and said that in 2010, visits to the Experian Hitwise Social Networks and Forums category increased by 17 percent.
It revealed that only are people visiting social sites more regularly, the time they spend on these websites is increasing, with the average session time spent on a social network in January 2011 reaching 22 minutes.
The report also found that the range and diversity of social networks is increasing, which is perhaps expected given that the market continues to grow.
As many people might predict, Facebook is the dominant social network in the UK, accounting for 56 percent of traffic to the industry during January, but in fact many social network junkies are also addicted to other social networking sites too.
"Indeed, the interaction between different social sites is significant, as users dart between multiple networks in order to chat to their various groups of friends and associates," the report said.
Amazingly the report added that 1 in 8 people who finish visiting a social network visit another one immediately afterwards and indeed this is often encouraged by easy links and connections between networking websites.
It found that Facebook is a major source of traffic to plenty of smaller networks; while almost a fifth of people leaving Twitter go on to visit another social network.
While content providers use social networks a lot to get traffic, the report said that websites selling products or services often rely primarily on people using a search engine to find their websites and therefore spend money with them.
"Successful transactional websites will be those that learn to harness the power of social networks, driving traffic through to their own websites," said the report.
