• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, April 21, 2010

This week brought another study showing the steady increase in consumers using mobile devices to access social networks. This one comes from Ground Truth, a mobile media measurement firm, which found that social network activity accounts for 60% of the time spent on the mobile Internet. That's more than four times the amount devoted to the next most-popular activity -- Web portals -- which accounts for just 13.7% of total mobile Internet use. It's also way ahead of mobile messaging, which claimed just 7.4% of total time spent, and mobile downloads, which accounted for just 1.3%.

Ground Truth also found that people who use mobile social networks tend to be more engaged with those networks than people on regular PC-based networks like Facebook and MySpace.

The Ground Truth findings would seem to jibe with other recent studies on mobile-social activity. Nielsen found that roughly half of Americans use mobile devices to get on the Internet for social media. The Nielsen study also addressed gender differences in mobile behavior, finding that women use mobile devices for social media purposes 10% more than men, including "tweeting" or checking into social networks like Facebook or MySpace. Overall Nielsen found Women's mobile social network usage led men's 55%-45%.

Another study from Ruder Finn found that on average Americans spend 2.7 hours per day using the mobile Internet, with 91% using it for social purposes. Breaking down the usage patterns, 62% use the mobile Internet to send or receive instant messages, 58% email, and 45% post comments on social networks. Meanwhile 43% said the use mobile Internet to "connect to people on social networking sites."