According to a study on social media usage by The Nielsen Company conducted in collaboration with AbsolutData, nearly 30 million Indians who are online are members of social networking sites and about two-thirds of them spend time on these social networking sites daily.

Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (a 43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company.

If social media and social networks are these all-powerful game changers, shouldn’t they eventually make a newsworthy impact on email, the internet’s original “killer app?”

Barack Obama’s campaign made political history when it used text-messaging to announce Joe Biden’s V.P. selection to 2.9 million mobile users.  Obama’s campaign also maintains a mobile website with news, video, and downloads.
In contrast, John McCain’s campaign has largely eschewed mobile marketing.  But that may just be the right strategy, according to Nielsen Mobile, which reported Monday that mobile advertising is a more efficient way to reach Democrats, rather than Republicans.
As of the second quarter of 2008, mobile media of all types were slightly more popular among Democrats, who were …

More Americans than ever before are buying smartphones and using mobile data services like text messaging, games, email, mobile Internet, video, and ringtones. 
But while mobile media use has grown rapidly in recent years, mobile advertising has been slow to take hold, Nielsen Mobile reported in a white paper released Tuesday.
In the U.S., some 76.8 million mobile users recall seeing advertising on their phones, according to Nielsen, but 63% report encountering mobile ads only infrequently — once a month or less.  Meanwhile, less than two-thirds of website homepage page views feature …