Behind Facebook, Twitter (photos)

An inside look at social media outlets incorporated


Employees at work at the Palo Alto headquarters of Facebook, Inc. in March 2009. The number of minutes Americans spent on social networking sites nearly doubled in the past year with Facebook and Twitter enjoying explosive growth, according to a new study (AFP/Getty Images/File/Gilles Mingasson).

Americans spending more time on social networks

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The number of minutes Americans spent on social networking sites nearly doubled in the past year with Facebook and Twitter enjoying explosive growth, according to a new study.

Nielsen Online found that the number of minutes Americans spent on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Tagged, Twitter, and LinkedIn grew 83 percent from April 2008 to April of this year.

It said the total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, from 1.7 billion in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009.

Facebook was the top social networking site when ranked by total minutes for the month followed by MySpace, which saw its total minutes decline from 7.3 billion in April 2008 to 5.0 billion in April 2009. Blogger, Tagged, and Twitter were next.

The number of minutes spent on micro-blogging service Twitter skyrocketed from 7.9 million in April 2008 to 300 million in April 2009, Nielsen said. More>>

What are they?

Facebook is a free-access social networking Website operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. Users add online friends, send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify others about themselves.

The site's name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and prep schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus. The site was originally limited to students and thus gained an advantage over its main competitor Myspace.

Mark Zuckerberg took an existing idea (social networking) and founded Facebook with his roommates, fellow computer science majors Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, while he was a student at Harvard University. More>>

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