Social life
Social networking traffic is still rising rapidly in the UK, according to new research from UKOM/Nielsen. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all registered unique-audience figures last month.
Such is the growth of social networking as a proportion of all Internet use that Facebook overtook the combined might of all Microsoft's UK sites - which includes Bing, MSN and Windows Live - for the first time.
26.8 million of us used Facebook in May, while all the fuss about what we may or may not say about whatever Ryan Giggs may or may not have got up to in his private life drew 6.14 million Brits to Twitter. This was a 34 percent increase on the month before, and was mainly due to a big increase in people over 50 having a look for the first time.
"The growth in audiences to these social networks is now primarily being driven by the 50-plus age group," said UKOM general manager James Smythe. "Just a few years ago, this group may have found itself out of place on these sites; now, on Facebook, for example, they account for more new adults visiting the site in the last two years than the under-50s."
The UK growth patterns more or less mirror those of the US, and put the reports of Facebook losing share to Twitter into perspective.
