"While the popularity of mobile social networking is widely believed, this is the first time we have been able to truly quantify just how much the category is driving adoption of the Mobile Internet with actual usage metrics," said Evan Neufeld, VP of marketing, Ground Truth.
"The disparity of time spent between social networking and the next category, portals, which account for 59.83 and 13.65 percent of time spent respectively, is a vivid illustration of the impact social networking has on Mobile Internet traffic in a given week."
Percent of Time Spent on Mobile Internet Usage by Category
U.S. Mobile Subscribers
Week of
Category Percent
Social Networking 59.83%
Portals 13.65%
Operator 9.02%
Messaging 7.35%
Mobile Downloads 1.27%
All Other 8.88%
Source: Ground Truth, Inc. Census of mobile subscribers for the week ending April 4, 2010.
n=3.05 million U.S. mobile subscribers.
Because Ground Truth can accurately measure any Mobile Web site using True View, its patent-pending, census-based methodology, the firm provides precise site-level usage metrics across several measures, including sessions per subscriber, pages per subscriber, pages per session and time per subscriber, on weekly basis. Beyond sheer usage trends in social networking, data for the week ending April 4 indicates that mobile-centric social networking sites such as MocoSpace and AirG are better at engaging consumer than are with PC heavyweights like Facebook and MySpace.
Mobile Social Networking Usage
U.S. Mobile Subscribers
Week ending April 4, 2010
Sessions/ Pages/ Pages/ Time/
Subscriber Subscriber Session Subscriber
Average 68.1 310 4.56 00:52:12
MySpace 57.6 246 4.28 0:40:19
Facebook 56.9 205 3.61 0:30:54
MocoSpace 63.9 476 7.45 1:31:02
FunForMobile 17.4 101 5.83 0:19:50
AirG 58.8 520 8.84 1:31:03
Facebook Photos 18.9 59.7 3.15 0:10:10
Cellufun 13.5 145 10.8 0:23:55
MBuzzy 64.3 359 5.58 1:09:41
MocoSpace Photos 15.7 57.2 3.63 0:12:22
MobaMingle 42 278 6.62 0:47:06
Source: Ground Truth, Inc. Census of mobile subscribers for the week ending April 4, 2010. n=3.05 million U.S. mobile subscribers.
"Facebook and MySpace may be the most addictive pastimes on the PC, but sites like MocoSpace and AirG command more attention on mobile phones. For example, each MocoSpace user spent in excess of an hour more on the site than did the average Facebook visitor during the week," observed Neufeld. "This data points to the fact that there is a whole universe of media properties advertisers need to consider that have to date been largely ignored. It also demonstrates that traditional media companies that are not focused on the Mobile Internet--both browser- and application-based usage--risk losing market share to leaner, more mobile focused companies."
Ground Truth data is from a census of 3.05 million U.S. mobile phone users, and is reported weekly. Working in partnership with operators and other data providers, Ground Truth protects the privacy of mobile subscribers, while providing services to the operators that allow them to optimize their networks, understand their audiences and negotiate with advertisers and publishers.
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