According to Nielsen studies, the time spent on Facebook on average in the US is now (August 2011) almost 8 hours per month – up from a bit less than 6h in August 2010.
That’s the average for 163 million US Facebook users. Or, in total, an astonishing cumulative 54 million days spent by all US Facebook users during that month. Communicating, chatting, sharing, collaborating.
It’s a flood of collaboration. Is that time wasted or time used appropriately? Some bloggers seem to think it is time wasted: see for example http://mashable.com/2011/09/30/wasting-time-on-facebook/. The name of the link is revealing of the mindset of the writer, although the post itself is just named “You spent 8 hours a month on Facebook [STATS]“.
Well people obviously find an interest and prefer to go on Facebook rather than watching TV. And although many Facebook posts are quite superficial, no doubt there are nuggets there ready to be harvested.
The Fourth Revolution is just kicking off. Time spent on Facebook and other social networks generates value. How do you benefit from this value?
