Nielsen: Internet users spend over 20% of their online time on social networks and blogs

The world is spending over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites,  according to a study published by Nielsen, that mentions also the undeniable popularity of social media, pointing at the fact that three of the most popular brands online are social-media related.

The study shows that the time spend online is equal to 22% of the entire period spent online or one minute at every 5 minutes. According to Nielsen, social network and blog sites are visited by three quarters of global consumers who go online, considering the numbers of people visiting these sites increased by 24% in 2010 compared to 2009.

The average visitor spends with two thirds more of his time on these sites, a 6 hours in April 2010, up from 3 hours and a half in the same period of 2009.

According to Nielsen, in terms of visitors, most popular is Google, followed by MSN / Windows Live/Bing, Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, YouTube, Wikipedia, AOL Media Network, eBay and Apple. When it comes about the time spent online on a site, the leader is Facebook (6 hrs), followed by MSN/Windows Live/Bing (2hrs 41mins), AOL Media Network (2 hrs), Yahoo, ebay, Google and Apple.

Also, the report says that the reach and usage of Facebook is the biggest in Italy, followed by Australia, United States, UK and Spain.