• 42% of high school students surveyed are using Twitter
• Facebook still reigns supreme above other social networks with teens and college students spending an average of 11.4 hours per week on the site.
• A little more than a quarter of the students surveyed reported spending less or no time at all anymore on the site. Among those, half traced the change back to six months ago or less.
• The reasons for the decline in activity were split:
  • 50% of girls claimed to be “tired of trying to keep up with all the activity” required of leading a demanding digital social life
  • Among males, 47% said that “most of my friends are using other sites now,” and 44% blamedMom and Dad for crashing the party
• 53% of high school females said they “can’t live without it” (hence the burn out syndrome)

More details at Ypulse.com: http://www.ypulse.com/ypulse-research-status-update-facebook-fatigue

For the first time, the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, produced in partnership with ForeSee Results and based on interviews with 70,000 customers, has included scores for social media sites.   Among the findings in the report:

• The aggregate score for social media sites was 70 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale of customer satisfaction, just above airlines, but below insurance companies.
• Facebook scored 64 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale, which puts Facebook in the bottom 5% of all measured private sector companies.  MySpace scored even lower, with a 63 point rating.
• Wikipedia (77) and YouTube (73) were the top-scoring social media sites.

The report also includes statistics related to purchasing recommendations.  Fourteen percent of YouTube users and 12% of Facebook users reported that they have purchased products or services that were recommended to them on the site.

Click here to read the press release.

Click here to download the report (free, registration required).

70% of social networkers now keep in touch with family via their various online networks, up from 61% a year ago, showing a shift as those who signed up for social networking to keep in touch with friends are using these sites to connect with family members as well.

Two-thirds of all online adults today have visited a social networking site in the last 30 days, up from 53% in 2008 and 20% in 2007. Social networks have thoroughly penetrated the young adult market, as nearly 9-in-10 online 18-to 34-year-olds visit such sites today. Older Americans are definitely involved as well, with 41% of online adults age 50 and older making monthly visits to sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

The rise of social networking tracks closely with that of Facebook. As of April 26, 2010, 46% of the U.S. online adult population reported having visited Facebook in the past 30 days.

An astounding two-thirds of social networking site visitors (68%) say they have shown their support of a product, service, company or musical group by becoming a “fan” or a “friend” on a social networking site – this number is up 9% from last year.

Knowing that social networkers are comfortable connecting with products and brands they support, it’s important to understand which brands have the best opportunity to connect with this group. Specifically, Facebook users are full twice as likely as the average American adult to shop at H&M. Twitter visitors are 3.7 times more likely to shop at Nordstrom.

Geographically, the report shows that heavy users of social networking sites are primarily concentrated in the Northwest and markets that are heavily influenced by major colleges or universities.

See the 2010 Social Networking Report on Experian Simmons for more information, graphs, and the full PDF report.

Still, the social networking habits of U.S. teens may be changing.  19% or teens with a Facebook account have either abandoned it or are using it less.  Of those that had decreased their usage of Facebook, the 49% had done so in the last month or in the last 2-3 months.

Respondents cited the following as reasons for spending less time on Facebook:

• 45% have lost interest
• 16% are leaving because their parents have joined
• 14% think “too many adults/older people” now use the social network
• 13% are concerned about their personal privacy.

Teens Study June 2010

According to comScore, Facebook served 176.3 billion display ads on its site in Q1 of 2010, or 16.2 percent of the total. In comparison, Yahoo  served 131.6 billion banner ads across Yahoo’s portal, and Microsoft  delivered 60.2 billion display impressions during that period.

More details and analysis at AdAge and at paidContent.

Mediapost also references a report from eMarketer, released in December 2009, that estimates social network ad revenues in 2009 at $2.2 billion, a little over half the Borrell estimate. Even factoring in another third for the additional spending which Borrell says go to promotions (not advertising), that comes to just $2.9 billion, still significantly lower than the figure predicted by the Borrell report.

According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook might make $1 billion in 2010, up from about $800 million in 2009. The separate (December 2009) figures from eMarketer have MySpace revenues at $465 million in 2009, decreasing 23% to $360 million in 2010. Twitter execs forecast $140 million in ad revenue in 2010, while Classmates.com had about $80 million in ad revenue in 2009 and is on course for similar performance in 2010.  This leaves MediaPost to speculate about which social networks are responsible for the rest of the current and future (projected) spending.

The study examined the social media consumption habits of 630 technology professional respondents and 350 technology marketing respondents, reveals a gap between social media usage and marketing – “While many technology marketers have established a presence on Facebook and Twitter, many are not taking full advantage of the sites that technology professionals frequent and value most, such as LinkedIn and blogs,” said Brandon Friesen, VP and online strategist at UBM TechWeb.

For technology professionals (CIOs, IT VP/Directors, IT Managers, Line-of-business management, etc.), social media now accounts for an average of 13% of the total time they spend consuming media for work purposes, and four in ten respondents plan to increase the amount of time they spend with social media.  LinkedIn and blogs were ranked as the top two social media most used for business purposes,  and almost 60% use social networks to get information about technology purchases.  Technology marketers (CMO/SVP/VP Marketing, Directors, Managers, Media Management, etc.) see Facebook and Twitter as the most influential sites, and they plan to increase spending on marketing for social media outlets over the next year.  One-third of technology marketers will expect to use social media to deliver a marketing ROI in 2010.

“Understanding the technology decision-making audiences’ motivations and behaviors when it comes to social media is exceptionally critical – especially at this stage where marketers are still feeling their way when it comes to social networking,” said Scott Vaughan, VP Marketing, UBM TechWeb. ”Social media allows you to get a market pulse and truly listen to what your customers and prospects are saying, driving both short and longer term go-to-market strategy.”

The company found that 43% of employees at the nation’s largest companies use LinkedIn, and 11% use Facebook.  3% reported using Twitter.

The top 3 companies with the most socially-active employees are Microsoft, eBay and Amazon.

The top 3 companies with the highest Twitter score–calculated based on  number of followers, number following and number of tweets for each company employee–are Microsoft, Raytheon and Analog Devices.

Flowtown has an infographic that nicely summarizes the results.

Download the full report (PDF)

Global traffic to social networking sites totaled 313,690 million visitors.  The total minutes spent on social networks monthly saw a more than 100% increase over the same time last year, driving the average time per person spent on social networks to over six hours per month.

Details at NielsenWire.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Social Media Market Share

The data for March 2010 is said to be based on 13 billion page views across the global StatCounter network of member sites. The company only recently added social media services to its GlobalStats tool, and notes that its market share appears to fluctuate more than browser or search statistics.

The top social media sites to generate global website traffic after Facebook, StumbleUpon and Twitter are YouTube (6%), reddit (4%), Digg (2%) and MySpace (2%).

Read more at TechCrunch.