Commentary

Mobile Social Usage Soars To Nearly A Quarter Of U.S. Population

Americans love their social media and they love their mobile devices. No surprise, then, that they love to access social media via their mobile devices, according to the latest figures from comScore’s MobiLens service, which shows that 72.2 million Americans accessed social networks or blogs on a mobile device in August 2011 -- up 37% from 52.7 million during the same month in 2010.

 

That’s about 23.4% of the U.S. population accessing social media through mobile devices on a monthly basis, and as one might expect, the proportion is even higher among people who own smartphones -- three out of five, according to Mark Donovan, comScore’s senior vice-president for mobile. And the monthly measure only tells part of the story, as a big subset accesses social media via mobile devices every day, with nearly 40 million Americans checking in on a daily basis -- up 58% from 25.3 million last year.

 

Although mobile browsers remain the most popular way of accessing social media via mobile device, with 42.3 million users according to comScore, they’re being rapidly overtaken by mobile apps. The mobile browser figure represents a 24% increase over last year’s figure of 34.2 million, while the number using mobile apps to access social media jumped 126% from 17 million to 38.5 million.

 

The most popular social media destination for mobile access was -- gasp -- Facebook, with 57.3 million mobile users in August 2011, compared to 38.2 million during the same month in 2010. Twitter’s mobile audience jumped 75% from 7.6 million in August 2010 to 13.4 million in August 2011, while LinkedIn soared 69% from 3.2 million to 5.5 million.

 

The comScore data also include promising data for marketers: among people who access social networks via mobile devices, 52.9% said they read posts from organizations, brands, or events; a third say they received a coupon, offer, or deal; and 27.7% said they clicked on an ad while on a social network site.

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