As theories circulate about the actual dollar value of sites like Facebook and Myspace-analysts recently placed Facebook’s worth at $10 billion-there is no question that people continue to gravitate in droves towards social networking and blog sites. In the U.S. alone, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making it the No. 1 social networking site when ranked …

On Sunday, May 31, Nielsen CEO David Calhoun appeared on “The Wall Street Journal Report” with Maria Bartiromo to discuss everything from television and media measurement, to how food, fuel, and fear are impacting consumers trends around the world.

On Friday, May 22, Nielsen Vice Chair Susan Whiting sat down with Fox Business News to discuss the latest television viewership data, which shows that Americans are watching more TV than ever.

On May 28, Susan Whiting also published an editorial for The Huffington Post.

Americans may choose to consume video on the “best screen available,” yet traditional TV remains the screen of choice.
The recent results of Nielsen’s Three Screen Report – a quarterly analysis from Nielsen’s Anywhere Anytime Media Measurement initiative (A2/M2) – show that the average American watches approximately 153 hours of TV every month at home, a 1.2% increase from last year. In addition, the 131 million Americans who watch video on the Internet watch on average about 3 hours of video online each month at home and work. …

Whoever said “content is king” was prescient. In today’s world, media is an on-demand experience with an array of platforms delivering rich content to on-the-go consumers via multiple devices. The fight for share of wallet is being played out on three screens: mobile, television and the Internet. So far, TV is winning.

Manish Bhatia, President, Advanced Digital Services, Nielsen
Any physicist will tell you energy can neither be created nor destroyed — just changed from one form to another. Much the same can be said these days about television viewing.
Life used to be so simple – one screen, three national broadcast networks and a handful of local TV stations in every market. What’s more, all stations “signed off” sometime after midnight, leaving insomniacs with nothing to watch until morning but the once iconic test pattern. Then along came cable, considerably expanding …

In Q4 of 2008, 11.2M people watched tv or video on their cellphones according Nielsen, an increase of 9% over the previous quarter. The report tracks usage by demographics, types of content viewed,  engagement, devices used and more. The number of mobile video subscribers grew overall as well to 18.6M, a jump of 13% over the previous quarter.
Key findings in the Mobile Video Report

51% of mobile video viewers surveyed reported that they are new to the medium, viewing for less than 6 months
Viewers are spending an average 17 sessions per …