Social networking giant Facebook saw its mobile audience increase by 50 percent, to more than 57 million users over the past year.

Mobile social networking grows 37pc: comScore

Micro-blogging website Twitter saw its mobile users increase by 75 percent to 13.4 million people, and LinkedIn, which has the smallest number of mobile users of the three most popular social networking websites, saw its mobile audience jump by 69 percent over the past year, to 5.4 million people.

ComScore’s Mark Donovan, explaining the surge in mobile audiences for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, said social media use reaches almost one third of mobile users in the United States and is one of the fastest growing mobile activities.  Donovan, who is senior vice president for mobile for the “global leader in measuring the digital world”, said visiting social networking websites “is even more prevalent among smartphone owners with three in five accessing social media each month, highlighting the importance of apps and the enhanced functionality of smartphones to social media usage on mobile devices.”

Overall, the number of Americans getting on social media websites and blogs from their mobile phones increased 37 percent to 72.2 million over the past 12 months, according to comScore.  Further, of these 72.2 million people, over 40 million access social media sites from their devices at least once a day.  comScore said the number of users getting on social networking websites via dedicated apps grew five times as fast as the group of users who access them via mobile browsers.

While the mobile browser based group increased to an impressive 24 percent to 42.3 million users, the app-based group grew a whopping 126 percent to 38.5 million people. comScore said reading friend’s posts were the activity engaged in by most – 80 percent of mobile users who log onto social networking sites.

About David John Walker

Dave has a B.A. in Mathematics, loves writing and reading about the latest developments in technology and social media, and has been working as a freelance writer for five years.