Social networking use up 83 percent in the US

Nielsen Online reports people in the U.S. spend 83 percent more time on social networking sites than a year ago. The most popular social networking site is Facebook, followed by MySpace and Blogger. Twitter takes the fifth place, while LinkedIn ends up at eight.

Facebook has a huge lead over MySpace, the former one saw a 699 percent year-over-year growth from 1.74 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.87 billion minutes in April 2009. MySpace on the other hand saw its usage decline 31 percent from 7.25 billion minutes to 4.97 billion minutes.

Twitter saw the most explosive growth, this social networking service saw its usage rise by 3712 percent to 299.84 million minutes.

"We have seen some major growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace," Jon Gibs, Nielsen's vice president for online media and agency insights, said in a statement. "Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space."

But the report also offered a cautionary note: the social networking user can be fickle, quickly bouncing from one service to another. "Remember Friendster? Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force? Neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune," said Gibs. "Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment's notice."