Some social networking statistics

Until a just a year ago it was the blog that seemed to be commanding a great deal of statistical Internet based research.

The year 2007, however, appears to be the year in which interest in social networking websites appear to have surpassed previous attention vested in rise of blogs and blogging circa 2004 to 2007.

An example of research into the rapid up-take of social networking sites is provided by Comscore (see figure for more details - visit my blog if you are reading this posting in any other form).

Details summarised by Comscore include the following:

- The European social networking community stood at 127.3 million unique visitors in August – reaching 56 per cent of the European online population.

- U.K. participation in social networking usage proved to be the highest in Europe, with 24.9 million unique visitors – 78 percent of the total U.K. online population – now belonging to the country’s social networking community.

- Usage of social networking sites in the U.K. proved heavier than the European average in terms of hours spent, pages viewed, and the number of visits per month.

- The average visitor to social networking sites in the U.K. spent 5.8 hours per month on those sites in August and made 23.3 visits.

- This was a significantly heavier usage level than in France, which averaged 2 hours per month and 16.8 visits per visitor, or Germany, with 3.1 hours per month and 13.8 visits per visitor.

For more details see U.K. Social Networking Site Usage Highest in Europe.