Social Media Statistics February 2010 now available >>

Social Networks continue to dominate online activity and usage across the globe and this is no more evident than here in the UK. A recent report from ComScore reveals some very interesting UK Social Media Stats.

Of the 36.9 million UK internet users in May 2009, 29.4 million visited at least one social networking website.

It is now clear that Social networking has now become very much a mainstream activity for UK internet users of all ages. In fact, 80% of all the UK’s online population visited a social networking site in May 2009, a nine percent growth across the board in a year. The highest level of penetration was with the age group of 25-34 year olds of which 90% visted a social networking site over the month period.

Interesting, this was higher than in the 15-24 year old range – the demographic usually presumed to have the highest user figures. Of this group of teens and early twenty-somethings 86% of internet users visted a social networking website.

Although usage amongst older age ranges is much lower than in 15-34 year olds, penetration was still very high – reaching over three quarters of people aged 35-54 and over two thirds of the UK online population aged over 55. When put into perspective this is extremely impressive particularly in comparison with other website categories visited by this demographic such as business & finance (63%), technology (62%t) or travel site (52%)

User engagement was also greater amongst the younger age groups, with monthly usage averaging 5.4 hours for 15 – 34 year olds. This was much lower than in the over 55 age range whom spent an average of 3.7 hours per month on social networking websites.

Overall, the average UK internet user spent 4.6 hours on Social Networking sites over the one month period.

Facebook has long been the UK’s most popular Social Networking site and now has over 19 million active users. In May 2009 alone Facebook.com received 23.9 million visitors in the UK. Other popular social networking sites continued to struggle to keep up with Facebook – Bebo followed as the second most visited UK Social Network (8.5 million visitors), then Windows Live Profile (6.9 million visitors) and MySpace Sites (6.5 million visitors). Even though Twitter has grown 3000% over the last 12 months the sites visitor numbers only reached 2.7 million in May 2009.

Source: ComScore

LATEST SOCIAL MEDIA STATS – DECEMBER 2009 >>

For more information on Facebook user statistics please see previous blog posts from August 2009, July 2009 and June 2009.

At Clicky Media we provide a wide range Social Media Marketing services, visit our social media services page to find out more or email us: info@clickymedia.co.uk.