Social Media Usage Grows in 2012 Thanks to Mobile

According to a report by Nielsen, consumers now spend 20% of their time online using social networks via PC’s, and 30% of their time using social networks via mobile devices. The report, which was published as a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey highlights the social media usage in the past year, and in the past year, time spent on social media in general within the US has grown from 88 billion minutes to 121 billion minutes.

What was the biggest reason for the impressive growth? Mobile. In fact, mobile accounted for 63% of the year-over-year growth.

The report goes on to highlight the top social networks, of course, with Facebook leading the pack. What’s interesting though is that PC visitors for Facebook has decreased by 4% YOY, while its mobile visitors have shot up significantly. In fact, mobile app visitors increased by 88% and mobile web visitors increased by 85%.

Foursquare also saw significant growth in its mobile app, with YOY growth of 118%, as it looks to push into the mainstream.

Of course, as you can see from the data, while Facebook and Twitter continue to be among the most popular social networks, one of the breakout stars for 2012 was Pinterest which had the largest year-over-year increase in both unique audience and time spent of any social network across PC, mobile web and apps. And it’s numbers are crazy, with over 1000% growth on the PC, roughly 1700% growth on mobile apps, and over 4200% growth on mobile web.

A few things I’m watching for in 2013 are the continuation of foursquare growth, bigger growth in Google+, and for Facebook to continue to dominate mobile (especially with Facebook’s new mobile ad network).