Research suggests that real world interactions drive online friendships. Meanwhile, sales-oriented and depressing comments help drive friend removals. Facebook etiquette also plays a role, with updating too often, too little or having too many friends a consideration for some Facebook users.

Social media activity also plays a role in these decisions, as research indicates that men are more likely to use social media for careers/networking and dating – while women use social media for a creative outlet, to get coupons/promos or to give positive feedback. More men add friends based on business networks or physical attractiveness and women are more likely to friend based on knowing someone in real life or remove them due to offensive comments.

Below is an infographic outlining the various reasons for adding or removing Facebook friends and a breakdown of social media activity:

*Methodology: NM Incite, State of Social Media Survey (April 2011). NM Incite’s ‘State of Social Media Survey’ is based on a representative sample of 1,865 adult (18+) social media users who were recruited from the Nielsen Online Panel to take an online survey. “Social media user” is defined as participating, talking, and networking online through various platforms to share information and resources. This includes Internet forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, video sharing, consumer rating and other social networking websites. The survey fielded from March 31 to April 14th.

Staying Social
Facebook’s popular app is the most active among Android owners 18-24 and 25-34, who both hover at around an 80 percent active reach. Additionally, more than three quarters of users 35-44 used the app recently as well.

Google’s YouTube app gets heavy usage from Android smartphone owners 18 -24: 64 percent have used it in the past 30 days, compared to 56 percent and 51 percent of 25-34 and 35-44 year olds. A preference for media apps with a social dimension (e.g. Words with Friends) among the 18-24 set is also reinforced by their sizable usage of music and video apps (e.g. Pandora) compared to older demographics.

Play Time
Not just for the kids, the ubiquitous game, Angry Birds, appeals more to those 35-44 when compared to other age groups: 35 percent of them have used the app in the last 30 days, while only 22 percent of those 18-24 and 29 percent of 25-34 year-olds launched the game.

Apps and More for Sale
Apart from gaming, the 35-44 segment demonstrates a greater inclination to shop using the Amazon AppStore: 24 percent of them used the app in the last 30 days, while only 14 percent of those 18-24 did the same. Groupon appeals more to those 25-34, not even making the top 20 ranking for those 18-24. A similar trend was found on Google+: active reach was higher for those 25 and older when compared to the 18-24 demographic.

Roughly 40 percent of tablet and smartphone owners in the U.S. used their devices daily while watching TV, while only 14 percent of eReader owners said they watched TV while using their device every day.

And what are smartphone and tablet owners doing while watching TV? Checking email. Email was the top activity for both men and women during television programming and commercial breaks. In addition, women reported engaging in social networking more than men, while men checked sports scores more often.

Advertisers should take note that while viewers may be splitting attention between two (or three!) screens, 19 percent of smartphone and tablet owners searched for product information and 13 percent searched for coupons or deals while the television was on.

U.S. Audience Profile: Groupon and Living Social

Visitors to Groupon and Living Social are similar in that nearly two-thirds are female and more likely than the average U.S. Internet user to be affluent.  Living Social’s visitors trend slightly more affluent and more educated than Groupon’s with 46 percent having a Bachelor’s or Post-Graduate degree, compared to 39 percent for Groupon (the national average for Internet users is 25%).  Visitors to Living Social are also 49 percent more likely than the average American online to make $150,000 or more, while Groupon’s visitors are 30 percent more likely.

Although the audiences to both sites share a similar gender and socioeconomic split, there are notable differences in the age and geographic location of their U.S. visitors.  Groupon has a higher concentration of visitors aged 35-64 (57 percent compared to 51 percent for Living Social), with the Internet average being 48 percent. Living Social has a higher concentration of younger visitors with 21-34 year olds making up 33 percent of their audience compared to 25 percent for Groupon and 21 percent across the entire web.

While both sites offer deals in many cities across the country, Groupon is most likely to have visitors from the Northeast while Living Social has a high concentration of visitors in the South and Pacific regions.

What deals to offer?

To secure and to grow their slice of the consumer pie, it’s important for daily deal players to understand what their audiences want so that they can offer relevant deals.  Among adults online who visit Coupons/Rewards websites, nearly half are interested in gardening, while roughly one-third are interested in home repair/renovation, religious involvement and landscaping.  Other standouts include knitting/sewing (Coupons/Rewards site visitors are 19% more likely than the average adult Internet user to be interested) and gourmet cooking (18% more likely).

The Social Incentive

With sharing deals with friends an important part of the business model for many daily deal sites—Living Social gives a free deal when enough friends purchase from your link while Groupon offers a monetary credit for the same—it’s important to understand how consumers interact online, including their activity on social networking sites.

Daily deal players might be pleased to know that adults online who visit Coupons/Rewards sites are not only more likely than the average adult online to have multiple social networking profiles (12% more likely), but also significantly more likely (33%) to post links, websites, articles and videos.

Celebrities can be valuable to advertisers, but so too can the people who follow them on social media websites. According to The Nielsen Company, 64 percent of adult U.S. Internet users who follow a celebrity also follow a brand – this means the celebrity follower is four times more likely to follow a brand than the average U.S. adult online.  Additionally, Nielsen found that such fans are also more likely to offer advice and opinion to fellow online consumers. This is particularly the case when it comes to entertainment topics where 32 percent of celebrity fans online provide advice on movies (making them 44% more likely than the average online user to do so), and 28 percent provide guidance on music (56% more likely) and television programs (34% more likely).

Fans of celebrities are also valuable consumers in other areas of online – particularly when it comes to transactions or purchases.  One quarter also used the web to conduct personal banking transactions and manage their credit card accounts, more likely to do so than the average adult online. Top online purchases among these online fans included clothing/shoes/accessories (18.2%), music (13.8%), and books (13.6%).

Top online activities among fans of celebrities included emailing, paying bills, and of course, social networking.  Of these top online activities, celebrity fans were significantly more likely than the average adult online to comment/post on social networking sites (86% more likely), view consumer generated video (83% more likely), visit a social networking site (67% more likely) and play online games (45%  more likely).

Note: Nielsen’s findings are based on data from @Plan Release 4 2010. @Plan is a quarterly survey of approximately 36,000 U.S. Internet users age 18 and older fused with Nielsen’s NetView Internet usage from 3rd quarter 2010.

Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company. The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.

“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin.

Additional findings include:

• Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks – accounting for 10 percent of all U.S. Internet time. Email dropped from 11.5 percent of time to 8.3 percent. (Source: Nielsen NetView)
• Of the most heavily-used sectors, Videos/Movies (which includes video-specific and movie-related websites only – and is not inclusive of video streaming behavior elsewhere) was the only other to experience a significant growth in share of U.S. activity online. Its share of activity grew relatively by 12 percent from 3.5 to 3.9 percent. (Source: Nielsen NetView)
• June 2010 was a major milestone for U.S. online video as the number of videos streamed passed the 10 billion mark. The average American consumer streaming online video spent 3 hours 15 minutes doing so during the month. (Source: Nielsen VideoCensus)
• Despite some predictions otherwise, the rise of social networking hasn’t pushed email and instant messaging into obscurity just yet. Although both saw double-digit declines in share of time, email remains as the third heaviest activity online (8.3 percent share of time) while instant messaging is fifth, accounting for four percent of Americans online time. (Source: Nielsen NetView)
• Although the major portals also experienced a double digit decline in share, they remained as the fourth heaviest activity, accounting for 4.4 percent of U.S. time online. (Source: Nielsen NetView)

Email Remains Top on Mobile Internet Activities
The way U.S. consumers spend their Internet time on their mobile phones paints a slightly different picture to that of Internet use from computers. In a Nielsen survey of mobile web users, there is a double-digit (28 percent) rise in the prevalence of social networking behavior, but the dominance of email activity on mobile devices continue with an increase from 37.4 percent to 41.6 percent of U.S. mobile Internet time.

Portals remain as the second heaviest activity on mobile Internet (11.6 percent share of time), despite their double digit decline and social networking’s rise to account for 10.5 percent share means the gap is much smaller than a year ago (14.3 percent vs. 8.3 percent).

Other mobile Internet activities seeing significant growth include music and video/movies, both seeing 20 percent plus increases in share of activity year over year. As these destinations gain share, it’s at the cost of other content consumption – both news/current events and sports destinations saw more than a 20 percent drop in share of U.S. mobile Internet time.

“Although we see similar characteristics amongst PC and mobile internet use, the way their activity is allocated is still pretty contrasting, added Martin. While convergence will continue, the unique characteristics of computers and mobiles, both in their features and when and where they are used mean that mobile Internet behavior mirroring its PC counterpart is still some way off.”

NOTE: This piece of research looked at the share of all U.S. Internet time each of the 84 “standard” NetView subcategories/sectors holds. Only the top 10 sectors were actually called out, the remaining 74 were grouped into “other” and not called out.

The Mobile Internet data is derived from a survey which tracks self-reported mobile internet usage from over 5,000 respondents each month.  Mobile internet universe is defined as people that they have used the mobile internet, email or instant messaging on their mobile phone in the past 30 days. The Mobile internet data is weighted back to benchmarks for age, gender, income, race/ethnicity and operator share collected in Mobile Insights.

• Download the Asia Pacific Social Media Trends webinar and related materials.

The survey found that three of the seven biggest global online brands are social media sites – Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube. Close to three quarters of the world’s Internet population (74%) have now visited a social networking/blogging site, and Internet users are spending an average of almost six hours per month on social media sites.

Social media is having an increasing impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions – in Asia Pacific, online product reviews are the third most trusted source of information when making purchase decisions, behind family and friends. This is particularly so for purchases of consumer electronics, cosmetics and cars – products where consumers are most likely to base their purchase decisions on online product reviews. But not ever country shares the same way.

REPORT HIGHLIGHTS

Blogging… it’s Big in Japan

• Japanese Internet users are the most avid bloggers globally, posting more than one million blogs per month, significantly more than any other country in the region.
• Japan’s adoption of Twitter continues to grow, with unique visitor numbers increasing in the last year from less than 200,000 to more than 10 million.
• Sixteen percent of Japanese Internet users now use Twitter, which compares to 10 percent in the U.S.

Grass roots celebrities attract China’s social networkers

• Bulletin board systems underpin popular social media behavior in China – more than 80 percent of social media content is bulletin board systems.
• Social media games are used as a stimuli to drive new users and gain reach with existing users, while content sharing behaviors are more popular among the more experienced users. Virtual product placement within social networking site games is becoming one of the most profitable methods of revenue for social networking sites.
• ‘Grass roots’ celebrity tracking dominates online conversations in China, with social media celebrities such as Sister Phoenix and Mr. Yuan outperforming real life celebrities in popularity.
• Chinese Internet users are the most likely in Asia Pacific to post a negative online product review, and are the only consumers in the region more likely to share negative reviews than positive reviews – 62% of Chinese Internet users say they are more likely to share a negative review compared to 41 percent globally.

Facebook threatens Orkut’s share in India

• Although 70 percent of social media users in India identify Orkut as their preferred social media site, Facebook is gaining market share with 50 percent of social media users claiming to use Facebook most often, compared to 38 percent for Orkut, with the most common reasons for switching include friends moving sites, preferring the look and feel of the site, and offering more features.
• Twitter has enjoyed exponential growth in popularity in India, with more than half of Twitter users (57%) having signed up in the past year. Close to one third of India’s social media users (32%) use microblogging sites such as Twitter at least once a day.
• Online product reviews are increasing their influence on purchases in India, particularly for consumer electronics – 55 percent of Indians that read online product reviews have purchased products based on feedback. Consumer durables/electronics are the most common products purchased based on reviews (64% of purchases).

Koreans a-buzz about social media

• By population, Korea is one of the most social media engaged countries in the world, with the country’s leading social media site, Naver, attracting 95 percent of the Korean Internet population every month.
• While penetration of social media amongst Korea’s Internet population is already strong, it continues to grow (Twitter alone saw 1900% growth in the year to May 2009) with much of this growth coming off the back of Korea’s June election and the adoption of mobile social networking.

Australians flock to online forums

• Australia leads the world in social media engagement, with the highest global average for time spent per month engaging with social media, averaging over seven hours per month
• In contrast to many countries, Australians look to communities of interest such as parenting or sports sites as a key channel for social media discussion – 62 percent of Australian Internet users visited a message board or forum in 2009.
• LinkedIn has seen one of the fastest growth trends amongst social media sites in Australia, with unique audience numbers increasing by 99 percent from July 2009 to May 2010

“The findings highlight, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that social media is here to stay and needs to be taken seriously by the broader business community, from the CMO to the CEO,” notes Megan Clarken, Managing Director of Nielsen’s online business in Asia Pacific. “With three quarters of the global Internet population now participating in some form of social media, businesses can no longer afford to simply observe the social media phenomenon, they need to embrace it.”

Brazil not only tops the list of teams favored to win this year’s World Cup, they also top the charts with the highest percentage (86%) of Internet consumers visiting a social network. The popularity of social networking in Brazil is due to the Orkut phenomenon, which first appeared there in 2004 – by September 2005, half of the Brazilian Internet population visited Orkut. Australian web users average the most time on social networking sites, averaging 7 hours 19 minutes in April, followed by the U.S. and Italy with around six and a half hours each.

Facebook’s reach is the widest in Italy, capturing two-thirds of the active unique audience in April 2010, making the site relatively more popular in Italy than in the three major English-speaking markets. Australia, the U.S. and the UK follow Italy with over 60% of active online consumers visiting the site. In contrast, Japanese people have the least appetite for Facebook, with reach and time spent markedly lower than in any of the other countries measured. Ameba, which offers a micro-blogging platform akin to Twitter, is the most popular social networking and blogging site in Japan, visited by 38% of Japanese people online while Facebook is the 40th most popular.

Globally, the total minutes spent on social networks monthly saw a more than 100% gain over the same time last year, driving the average time per person spent on social networks to over six hours per month.

NOTE: Effective with June 2009 data reporting, Nielsen has made several enhancements to the U.S. NetView service.  For some sites, trending of previously-reported data with current results may show percentage differences attributable to this methodology change and should only be compared directionally.