What's hot:
Social media on the go
Huge growth in mobile users visiting their favorite sites
By Toni Fitzgerald
Oct 21, 2011
The next big wave in social media is already here: accessing the likes of Facebook and Twitter via mobile devices.
The number of people accessing social networks via mobile phone has exploded over the past year as smartphones with web capabilities become increasingly commonplace.
An average of 72.2 million people in the U.S. accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile devices during the three months ended in August, according to data released yesterday by comScore, the digital measurement company, up 37 percent from the same time last year.
Those users are also doing so more frequently. More than half of mobile social media users, almost 40 million people, accessed social media sites or blogs daily during that same span. That's up 58 percent over last year.
Most people use mobile browsers to access their social networks, but apps usage is growing, up 126 percent over last year to 38.5 million, 3.8 million fewer than browser users.
The growth of apps speaks to the fact that mobile users are getting increasingly savvy. They are learning the shortcuts to accessing mobile content on the go, and the increasing trend toward geo-based social networking sites and services, where you check in from your mobile phone, is undoubtedly increasing mobile social network adoption too.
As for the most popular on-the-go social networking sites, Facebook rules on mobile devices much as it does on the traditional web, with 57.3 million users in the three-month period measured by comScore.
Twitter was second at 13.4 million users, followed by LinkedIn at 5.5 million. All were up at least 50 percent over last year.
Roughly one-third of U.S. adults, or 82.2 million, have smartphones, according to comScore, and that is climbing at a rate of about 10 percent every quarter.
***
Meanwhile, here are some other social media stories that have the web buzzing this week:
* The killing of Muammar Gaddafi predictably set social networks ablaze yesterday, most notably Twitter, where a grainy photo of the Libyan dictator taken via cell phone made the rounds.
Some news organizations decided not to show the photo, and so social networking was the main way it was passed around.
But already yesterday afternoon there were warnings that hackers might be using the promise of a link to the lurid photo on Twitter as an opportunity to plant damaging malware, as they did with similar photo links after the killing of Osama bin Laden last spring.
* People with big brains may also have more Facebook friends. A new study from the University College London finds that there is a link between the size of certain areas of the brain and the number of connections a person has on social networks.
Alas, it's still unclear if the social ties actually helped people increase brain size or if those with bigger brains were simply predisposed to have more connections.
|
|
|
