USA: the number of minutes people spend on social-networking sites has increased 83 percent year over year

[newsfactor] Twitter investors may be speculating about the value of social-networking sites, but no one is speculating about their popularity.

In the U.S. alone, the number of minutes people spend on social-networking sites has increased 83 percent year over year, according to Nielsen Online. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year over year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making it the number-one social-networking site for the month.

"We have seen some major growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace. Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way, perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space," said Jon Gibs, vice president of online media and agency insights for Nielsen.

"The one thing that is clear about social networking is that regardless of how fast a site is growing or how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers," he said. "Remember Friendster? Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force? Neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune. Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment's notice."

Tweets Grow, But Facebook Leads Social Networking