Surge in time spent on social networking sites

According to a report by The Nielsen Company, social networking usage by Americans continues to soar. From a comparison of internet time spent on social networking sites and blogs between August 2008 and August 2009, Nielsen has measured an increase of 11%, from 6% of all internet time to 17%.

Nielsen vice president of media and agency insights Jon Gibs explains this triplication of usage of social networking websites: “This growth suggests a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used. While video and text content remain central to the Web experience – the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth.”

As users spend more time on social networks, advertisers are starting to take notice and move their campaigns to social networking sites. Despite the recession, online advertising spending on the top social network and blogging sites has seen an increase of 119 percent, from approximately $49 million in August 2008 to approximately $108 million in August 2009.

And how about you? Have you spent more time on a social networking website this summer than you did a year ago?

Frederik De Bosschere

Source:
The Nielsen Company

We accept Facebucks.

Once you have the ‘one-billion-dollar idea’ for an internet start-up, how are you ever going to be able to set up your project and keep it healthy in the long-term? Are you willing to invest your own capital in your business or would you rather rely on profits gathered with advertisements? Companies are definitely convinced of the importance of internet advertising due to the growing amount of time that people spend on it. In the UK, for example, recent studies indicate that internet advertising rose to 23.5 per cent of the advertising market, outrunning television ads that got stuck on 21.9 per cent. However, is internet advertising the best way to achieve profitability?

Facebook tries to escape from its constant dependence on online ads. The website decided to focus on the enormous amounts of money spent in the applications that run on Facebook’s platform. Therefore the social networking website started an internal currency. This payments system allows users “to purchase Facebook ‘credits’, then use those credits to buy virtual goods from the third-party applications that run on the site, or from Facebook itself.” The social networking website, being the payment provider, earns a percentage on every transaction on the website and hopes to increase its income.

Is this new and cool internal currency a smart strategy or is it never going to be successful?

Sources:
Facebook brings in payment system, Financial Times
Facebook considering virtual currency system?
Net Advantage, Financial Times

Lore Vandoorne