Global web users spent on average five and a half hours on social network sites in December. That is an increase in time spent of 82 per cent in one year, according to the latest number from Nielsen.

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It is an amazing growth, as is illustrated by the graphs from Nielsen below.  According to the analysis company social networks is now the most popular online category, followed by gaming and instant messaging.  And most popular is Facebook, with an average time spent of about six hours per month. Two thirds of global social media users visited the site during a month.

This remarkable fast development proves indeed how social networks are becoming platforms for all other kinds of services and content on the web. No company wanting to communicate with people can anymore ignore the power of social media.

Finding updated numbers of social networks users can be hard.  Here are some of the sources which might help you.

The list is inspired by the blog of web strategist Jeremiah Owyang, who has collected some of the useful reports in this regard.

For an overall view, try the Nielsen Wire. Its latest report was published in October and shows that Myspace is still in the lead, but with Facebook demostrating the strongest growth in number of users  (116 %) over the last years.

Rubicon Consulting gives more insight into who the users are in a major survey. Unfortunately the survey only includes US users.

Some more links from Owyang’s blog: