Facebook, Twitter Post Gains in User Time Spent, Report Says. A report from Nielsen Online shows the total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year, while user time on social networking powerhouse Facebook increased its user minutes nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making Facebook the top social networking site for the month. Jon Gibs, Nielsen Online's vice president of online media and agency insights, said Facebook's rise has negatively impacted the user time spent on rival MySpace, which saw declines year-over-year. "Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space," he said. "The one thing that is clear about social networking is that regardless of how fast a site is growing or how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers.
" In April 2009, users spent a total of 13.8 billion minutes on Facebook, up from 1.7 billion total minutes in 2008. The Water Cooler Is Now On The Web. Like many twentysomethings, the workers at Starcom MediaVest Group spend a portion of their workday on a social network. So in April, executives of the ad-buying firm figured, why fight it? They launched a network of their own, for employees only, called SMG Connected. Today, a little more than a third of the company's workers, or 2,060 people, have signed up for their own pages where they can create profiles that outline their jobs, list the brands they admire (Nike (NKE)?
Starbucks (SBUX)?) , and describe their values by choosing from words such as "creativity" and "humor. " The service even winks at how people use MySpace.com (NWS) or Facebook to put themselves at the center of the universe: Search for someone--say, with digital experience in Mexico--and you show up as a pushpin in the center of a bull's eye, with surrounding pushpins representing people who fit the bill. That translates into a juicy new sales opportunity for tech companies that sell networking products. I.B.M. to Introduce Workers? Networking Software - New York Time.