comScore, a digital measurement firm, released a study today highlighting the rise in social media access via mobile phones and offering some comparison metrics for some of the biggest social networks and their usage on mobile devices.comScore measured the changes in both mobile browser access to social networks and the access numbers to specific social networks from January 2009 to January 2010.
yle=”font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt;”>Some key findings of the study:
– 30% of smartphone users accessed social networks via mobile browsers — this was up from 22.5% in 2009.
– Total social networking access via mobile browsers on all mobile phones rose to 11.1% — this was up from 6.5% in 2009. Most of this growth was in the uptick in smartphone usage.
When it comes to specific social networks, Twitter and Facebook
both had increases in mobile browser usage in the triple digits. Twitter usage via mobile browsers was up 347% while Facebook mobile browser usage was up 112%.
Mirroring non-mobile usage, MySpace
mobile access was actually down 7% year over year.
It’s important to note that these figures are just from mobile browser statistics — they don’t even take into account the use of mobile applications for Twitter or Facebook.
Both Facebook and Twitter have prospered from having strong mobile strategies. Twitter’s mobile strategy and integration with SMS messages has made it a natural mobile player since its inception; still more and more users are turning to its mobile browser counterpart to send and receive messages.
Facebook has a great presence on mobile platforms, but the fact that so many people are continuing to use it from a mobile browser shows that its strategy of catering to mobile users is working.
