Social media use has become the most popular activity online and the popularity continues to grow as users who register in different social media platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more keep rising. The Nielsen social media report for 2011 lays down the most popular and visited brands with snapshots of the current social media landscape and audiences particular in the U.S. and other major markets.


Not surprisingly, Facebook topped the list among websites which users spend more time and web use in general with an average of 53.5 million minutes spent in a month followed by Yahoo! and the web giant Google. The complete figures for web brands with most number of minutes spent by users are shown below

Top 10 U.S. Web Brands by Total Minutes, in Billions, Home and Work (May 2011)

Facebook also tops in particular for the most visited social networking and blogs sites of 2011 outnumbering blogger with the same figure of 53.5 million minutes. The exact figures for particular social networking sites and blogs are shown below.

Top 5 U.S. Social Networks and Blogs Total minutes (000s), Home and Work (May 2011)

In terms of average number of unique visitors per month, Neilsen reported the table below showing the rank, website and the average number of unique visitors per month with Facebook still on the number 1 spot followed by blogger and twitter.com. Google+,  The fastest growing social networking site also made in the top 8 spot with an average of eight thousand unique audience share per month.

Source: Nielsen Data from January – October 2011, Home and Work Computers. Ranked on average monthly unique audience.

The recent report released by Comscore.com also showed a relatively the same figures for leading social networking sites with facebook as the undisputed on the top rank followed by twitter and Linkedin.com.


With more than 800 million active users everyday, there is no doubt that Facebook leads in all the charts for being the most visited social networking site but we can also expect that other related sites can also be successful on their own in the near future.

And as social media and blog sites continue to comprehensively include a wide variety of audience, challenges also continue to be of great importance for traditional media, retailers, and advertisers to understand how different consumer segments use and share content through social media and blogs.