With data from more than 125 Facebook advertising campaigns from 70 brands, Nielsen and Facebook release their findings that hold important implications for brand advertisers.

With Facebook leading the way and Twitter activity on the rise, Australians are rapidly increasing their participation in social media, content sharing and brand interaction.

On average, global web users across 10 countries spent roughly five and a half hours on social networks in February 2010, up more than two hours from the same time last year.

In a demographic view of social networking activity on mobile devices, women were found do use their phones to “tweet” and “friend” 10% more than men.

In the U.K., almost 80 percent of the time spent on Twitter is accounted for by 7 percent of its most active users. Other social networks show similar patterns.

“The early buzz data makes one thing clear — controversy drives conversation,” said Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of digital strategy at The Nielsen Company.

As sites like Twitter and Facebook continue to grow, global consumers spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites in December 2009.

While people 65 and older still make up less than 10 percent of the active Internet universe, their numbers are on the rise. In the last five years, the number of seniors actively using the Internet has increased by more than 55 percent, from 11.3 million active users in November 2004 to 17.5 million in November 2009. Among people 65+, the growth of women in the last five years has outpaced the growth of men by 6 percentage points.

Time spent viewing video on social networking sites increased 98 percent year-over-year as the number of online video streams viewed on social networking and blog sites increased 45 percent year-over-year.

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?”