Melissa Davies, Nielsen Online
It has been impossible to escape the news about swine flu (or H1N1 virus) this week. One of the most interesting developments this week has been watching the way people are using the Internet, and specifically social media, to connect with one another around this issue. As of yesterday, buzz volume about swine flu in the blogosphere was still on its meteoric climb, far surpassing discussion levels for the peanut butter/salmonella scare that happened earlier this year or, for a different reference point, recent pop singing sensation …

David Martin, Vice President, Primary Research, Nielsen Online

Our recent post about how the majority of people who use Twitter wind up abandoning the service received a lot of great coverage and feedback. We also received a healthy amount of criticism from the Twitter community who were concerned that our study sold Twitter short because it failed to take into account applications and other websites that feed into the Twitter community.
So, as an update, we went beyond just Twitter.com, adding in more than 30 websites and applications that feed into the …

Karen Watson,  Managing Director, Government & Public Sector Sales, The Nielsen Company
One hundred days is scarcely enough time to draw any firm conclusions about a new president’s capabilities. Even so, Barack Obama has garnered considerable respect for his media skills. Pundits have dubbed him the “new media president;” while some of the most cynical among them believe his underlying strategy is to end run traditional Washington gatekeepers by communicating more directly with constituents sympathetic to his agenda. But his fans and critics alike may be missing the bigger picture.
“As audiences …

Maya Swedowsky
President Barack Obama’s inauguration marked the beginning of a new era, which included the launch of a dramatically overhauled White House Web site. President Obama wasted no time ensuring that the official site, WhiteHouse.gov, represented a continuation of his campaign’s masterful use of the Internet and social media.
During President Obama’s first month in office, it seemed like the overhaul had paid off with unique visitors to WhiteHouse.gov reaching an all-time high. However, as the novelty of having an Internet-savvy administration seemed to wear off, so did the visitation rate, …

NOTE: See the important update to this story here.
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David Martin, Vice President, Primary Research, Nielsen Online

Oprah embarrassed herself on it with a stuck caps lock. That guy from Punk’d competed with “the most trusted name in news” for audience. A befuddled Jon Stewart shook his fist at it in anger. Let there be no doubt: Twitter has grown exponentially in the past few months with no small thanks to celebrity exposure. People are signing up in droves, and Twitter’s unique audience is up over 100 percent in March. But despite …

Online advertising remains strong, even as ad spending has decreased across other media, and MySpace has benefited from this trend with several large-scale campaigns from auto makers.  But in recent months, Facebook has surpassed MySpace in terms of monthly unique audience and stickiness: its monthly unique audience grew 177 percent in the last year compared to a 9 percent decrease for MySpace and time per person on Facebook went from 1 hour 8 minutes in March 2008 to 3 hours 16 minutes in March …

Michelle McGiboney, Nielsen Online
Twitter.com continues to grow in popularity and importance in both the consumer and corporate worlds. No longer just a platform for friends to stay connected in real time, it has evolved into an important component of brand marketing. Unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009, making it the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for the month.  Zimbio and Facebook followed, growing 240 percent and 228 percent, respectively.
Fastest Growing Member Community …

About 6.5 million Australians belong to an online social network, and more than two-thirds of Internet users looked at other people’s content on social networking sites during 2008 according to Nielsen Online’s latest consumer generated media report.  The most popular sites are Facebook – which showed 32 percent growth in 2008, MySpace, which recorded a 2 percent gain and Flickr, which grew by 14 percent.  Among those who blog, MySpace was the favored vehicle, with almost one-third of users preferring it over any other site.  Twitter penetration remains low – …

John Burbank, Nielsen Online
For years, it has been assumed that home internet usage would cannibalize live television viewing, but there’s something interesting happening between social networking and live television.  Could it be that what Pete Blackshaw termed “telecommunities” – people simultaneously watching live television programs and chatting in real time with an online network of like-minded fans - will gain scale and give consumers a reason to stick with live viewing?
Let’s look at what happened during the Oscars.
During this year’s broadcast, we used Nielsen’s “Convergence Panel” – a sample of homes in which we …

Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit social networking or blogging sites, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time, according to a new Nielsen report “Global Faces and Networked Places.” If data captured from December 2007 through December 2008 is any indication, that percentage is likely to grow as time spent on social network and blogging sites is growing more than three times the rate of overall Internet growth.
“Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience,” commented John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online. “While two-thirds …