comScore has released a study on social networking access via mobile phones that reveals that 30.8% of Smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up from 22.5% a year ago. Access to Facebook via mobiles grew 112%, while Twitter experienced a 347% increase.
Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviours on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile web, says Mark Donovan, comScores Senior Vice President of Mobile. Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the centre of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser.
In January 2010, 11.1% of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via the mobile, an increase of 4.6% over the previous year. Much of this growth has been driven by Smartphone users, 30.8% of whom accessed social networking sites on their mobile browsers, up more than 8 percentage points on the year. By comparison, just 6.8% of feature phone users accessed social networking sites on their mobile phones.
Access of leading social networking sites via mobile browser continues to see significant growth, says comScore. In January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, a 112% over the previous year. MySpace attracted 11.4 million users, approximately half that of Facebook, in January. Twitter attracted 4.7 million mobile users in January, a 347% on the previous year. These figures do not include access of the social networking services by the nearly 6 million mobile phone owners who do so exclusively through mobile applications.