Social Networking is addictive and attractive to advertisers according to Comscore Study

Even though relatively new phenomenon, social networking sites are becoming the connected contries and users newest addiction, according to research. Data from internet tracker Comscore World Metrix show that the average Brazilian user spent 11.7 hours a month on sites like Bebo, Facebook and MySpace. Canadians ranked second with 6.5 hours and UK surfers have topped the charts of social networking sites, for europe, according to recent figures again from comScore, averaging 5.8 hours per month. The study did not include data from USA.
Comscore press release could be found here.
The European social networking community stood at 127.3 million unique visitors in August, reaching 56 per cent of the European online population. Social networking sites allow users to find old friends, interact, and share photos with their network of contacts, among many other things.
Advertisers like them because of their so-called 'stickiness', in that they keep users interested for long periods of time. A visitor to Facebook will not only look at their own profile but those of their friends.

The social networking craze has exploded in popularity this year. In the UK, Bebo is still the most popular network followed by MySpace and then Facebook. However, Comscore expects Facebook's phenomenal growth to push it to the top slot in the next couple of months.