Mobile research company Ground Truth has published a survey that shows more than half of the time spent on the mobile internet is spent on social networking sites. The US-based research said that 59.8% of online time was spent on social networking sites. Portals took 13.7% of consumers' time, operator sites took 9%, messaging 7.4% and downloads 1.3%.
Mobile-focussed sites airG, MocoSpace and mbuzzy were all visited for an average of over one hour per week.
Evan Neufeld, Ground Truth's vice president of marketing, said "While the popularity of mobile social networking is widely believed, this is the first time we have been able to truly quantify just how much the category is driving adoption of the Mobile Internet with actual usage metrics. The disparity of time spent between social networking and the next category, portals, which account for 59.83 and13.65 percent of time spent respectively, is a vivid illustration of the impact social networking has on Mobile Internet traffic in a given week."
"Facebook and MySpace may be the most addictive pastimes on the PC, but sites like MocoSpace and AirG command more attention on mobile phones. For example, each MocoSpace user spent in excess of an hour more on the site than did the average Facebook visitor during the week. This data points to the fact that there is a whole universe of media properties advertisers need to consider that have to date been largely ignored. It also demonstrates that traditional media companies that are not focused on the mobile internet — both browser- and application-based usage — risk losing market share to leaner, more mobile focused companies."