New statistics from Nielsen online show that social networking has overtaken email in terms of worldwide reach. The Nielsen study reports that 66.8% of Internet users across the globe accessed “member communities” last year, compared to 65.1% for email. The study also reports that in 2008, users spent 63% more time on member communities than they did in the previous year. Facebook saw the biggest growth — a whopping 566% increase in time spent on it by users worldwide. And Facebook’s fastest growth demographic is older users – the social network tacked on 12.4 million people between ages 35-49 in 2008 according to Nielsen.
And mobile social networking is rapidly growing across the globe — with the biggest growth in Britain, followed by the U.S.
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 percent (2 million people) doing so, compared to 19 percent in the US (10.6 million people). These numbers are a big increase over last year – up 249 percent in the UK and 156 percent in the US.
