Overall 213 million Americans were active online in November 2011, and Nielsen estimated that over 274 million Americans were connected to the Internet.

Overall 210 million Americans were active on the Internet in September 2011, and Nielsen estimated that Internet access continued to grow, with over 275 million Americans connected as of September 2011.

Hybrid data extends beyond Home and Work PCs, and as a result of these measurement enhancements and the additional sources measured, metrics including Unique Audience, which Nielsen uses to rank the top web brands, witnessed changes in data for July. Therefore July data can not be trended, but moving forward Total Internet Audience data can be trended with previous months’ Total Internet Audience data.

Hybrid measurement combines Nielsen’s online panel, a people-based representative sample employed to measure consumer’s Internet behavior using Home and Work computers, with tag-based data from websites to account for Internet use from any source. Thanks to this hybrid approach, Nielsen’s Total Internet Audience metric includes web browsing activity from all devices, including mobile devices, tablets, secondary PCs and access points outside of home and work locations.

Overall 213 million Americans were active on the Internet in July 2011 from all sources included in hybrid measurement. Internet access through home and work PCs continued to grow to 249 million individuals in the U.S. during July 2011.

Twitter’s audience levels grew by more than 400% in 2009 and nearly one quarter of online Australians (23%) read ‘tweets’ in the past year, 14 percent ‘followed’ companies or organizations via Twitter (up from 5% in 2008) and 13 percent posted ‘tweets’ (up from 4% in 2008). Wikis continued to grow as a popular form of online content – close to three quarters of Australian Internet users (73%) read a wiki in the past year compared to 61 percent in 2008 and just 37 percent in 2007. Nearly two in five online Australians are now interacting with companies via social networking sites, reinforcing notions that Australians are open to engaging with brands and companies online.

“The opportunities for brands and companies to tap into the social media phenomenon are really just beginning to emerge and to date we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” states Melanie Ingrey, Research Director for Nielsen’s online business. “Incredibly, nearly nine in 10 (86%) of Australian’s online are looking to their fellow Internet users for opinions and information about products, services and brands, and Australians’ engagement with online word of mouth communication is going to increase in coming years as social media plays an increasingly important role in consumer decision making.”

Social networking on sites such as Facebook was a key driver in Australians’ trial and uptake of social media. Close to three in four online Australians (73%) have looked at others’ profiles on social networks and well over one third (37%) of these report to be interacting with others via social networking sites on a daily basis. Facebook dominates the online social networking space, with three quarters of Australian Internet users (75%) reporting to have visited Facebook, 59 percent have a Facebook profile, and the average time spent on Facebook in a given month is 8:19 hours – seven and a half hours more than its closest rival site, YouTube. Moreover, 83 percent of social networkers name Facebook as their main social networking platform, up from 72 percent in 2008 and 34 percent in 2007. And, as reported recently in a global view of social networking usage, Nielsen data showed that Australia topped even the U.S. when it came to time spent per person on social networks.

Networking On The Go
The rise in smartphone ownership (43% of online Australians now own a smartphone) and relaxed download caps on mobile phone plans has seen mobile social networking gain traction in the past year. Nielsen found that over one quarter of social networkers (26%) participated in mobile social networking in the past year, with younger consumers the most likely to participate in social networking via mobile – 66 percent of mobile social networkers are under 35 years of age. Facebook is the most popular social networking site accessed via a mobile (92% of mobile social networkers have visited Facebook), followed by YouTube and Twitter (18%) and MySpace (9%). However, Twitter sees the most frequent mobile usage, with half of its mobile users visiting the site daily. In comparison, Facebook saw 36 percent of its mobile users visit the site daily, while 22 percent of MySpace users and 16 percent of YouTube users were making daily visits.

Looking at our newly expanded panel that includes more than 30,000 sites, we have found that short tail sites (those with a greater than 1 percent reach) remain the most engaging brands online.

It seems that the differentiation between the long tail and short tail is important. Long tail sites tend to have lower engagement levels than short tail sites.

However, it would be reasonable to ask: “well, since not all short tail sites are the same, what happens to those numbers if you remove portals and large social networks?” The answer is interesting. When we look at the data in relation to the highest traffic sites on the Web (e.g., Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Apple and Facebook) here’s what happens:

Long tail sites tend to have lower engagement levels than short tail sites; however, the largest jump isn’t between long tail and short tail, it is really between everyone and the top 10 sites.

What does this amount to? As much as anyone thinks the future is in the long tail, it’s just not the case-at least not yet. In fact, consumers feel more comfortable on large, mass media sites. We know the Internet is changing. We know there are more blogs, boards, tweets and social networks than ever before. But what’s also clear is that while the Internet itself is fragmenting (like all other media), people continue to spend their time on the sites that offer them the most options and functionality.

Findings from an  Internet snapshot from June 18, 2009:

• Wikipedia emerges within the top two search results for 4/5 of the leading topics.
• At least one social media source emerges within the top 10 search results for every term. In most cases, the social media sites emerge directly above a traditional, major news source, such as WSJ.com.

In a follow-up snapshot on June 24, a marked shift takes place, reaffirming the Iran election story as a watershed moment for online news and communications:

• YouTube emerges within the top 10 search results for all search terms in the second week.
• Wikipedia remains within the top three search results in the second week for four of the five search terms.
• Twitter emerges within the top 20 search results in week two – specifically, the Twitter results for Moussavi and Ahmadinejad. Of course, traditional news sources such as the BBC (and CNN, in week two) bubble to the top of search results, as do general information sites such as Yahoo.com and Infoplease.com.

What this means is that general human curiosity is driving people to look to all available sources for information.  The conflict in Iran presenting the latest and perhaps most sophisticated example of how the world has changed for journalists, the media and increasingly active media consumers alike.

So what else do the search results signify? Is consumer generated media (news by the people, for the people) eclipsing traditional sources? Are people more frequently linking to Wikipedia than the New York Times for information about Iran? What does it mean that Mashable is among the top three search results for “Iran Election?” What role does Twitter play? As major events break (Iran, Health Care, Michael Jackson) we will continue to dive into the data and present answers to these questions, both through our own analysis and through feedback and opinions of others. After all, if weve learned anything in the last few weeks, it’s that the power is in the hands of the people… What do you think?

When looking just at blogs via BlogPulse, compared with any recent health crisis or pop culture meme, the swine flu blog conversations are now more than 10 times those surrounding the salmonella scare earlier this year, and nearly five times the buzz generated by singer Susan Boyle.

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The increased conversations around swine flu on Twitter, where swine flu found its way into nearly 2% of all tweets, are indicative of the spike in conversations around the web.

Controlling the disease, and the message

As updates emerge hourly (the swine flu Wikipedia page was updated 60 times between 10am and 11am) response to the spread of the virus, the Centers For Disease control acted quickly, updating their homepage and creating a special section solely for updates and information on swine flu that includes key facts, related items and the ability to share/post the page to social bookmarking and social networking sites. Buzz activity about the CDC mirrors closely the buzz surrounding both health scares.

View the full press release.

View the top U.S. Web brands for September and October 2008.

Yahoo! and MSN/Windows Live rounded out the top three, with unique audiences of just over 116 million and 102 million visitors, respectively.

View the full press release.

View the top U.S. Web brands for September 2008.