Social networking "reaches one billion users"

 

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By David Bayon in San Francisco

Posted on 20 Sep 2007 at 12:04

More than one billion people are now subscribed to social networking sites worldwide, contributing to more than a quarter of all internet traffic.

The figures, from digital information provider comScore, mean one in six people across the globe have profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or one of the other myriad networking sites, with 154 million of those logging in on a daily basis.

These statistics are just a few of those provided by Intel's Anand Chandrasekher in his "Unleashing the Internet Experience" keynote speech at IDF in San Francisco. Chandrasekher was highlighting the fact that although the number of users is huge, fewer than 5% of those access the sites from mobile devices.

"It's not being done on handsets. It's not being done on phones. All of the social networking that we're talking about, this staggering number, this opportunity is all on PCs. Greater than 95% of this is being done on PCs today."

According to Intel research, 61% of internet-capable mobile phones are not used to browse the internet at all, something that Intel hopes to change with its next generation of mobile internet devices (MIDs).

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