NIELSEN WIRE — Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company. The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging. "Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie," said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin...

INSIDE FACEBOOK — Facebook’s growth slowed down in the United States in June, following a burst of activity through April and May. The country picked up only 320,800 new monthly active users in June, compared to the outstanding 7.8 million it gathered in May. It’s not uncommon to see a saturated country like the US take a breather after a spurt of growth. However, some unusually interesting demographic trends took place for the country in June that add nuance to the overall growth number...

CLICKZ — Super Bowl XLIV turned out to be the most-watched TV program in history, according to Nielsen. The distinction comes at a time of unprecedented popularity for social media platforms, particularly Facebook and Twitter. So how does the U.S.'s biggest advertising stage affect the social media footprint of participating brands? On Feb. 2, ClickZ recorded the number of Facebook "fans" and Twitter "followers" for each of the known advertisers heading into the game. A week later, our team pulled the numbers for the brands to see what kind of increases took place...

MARKETINGSHERPA — Summary: Working with Survey Sampling to access a nationally representative sample of consumers, this year’s Popular Media Study explores social media usage, and how it may affect the relationship people have with commercial interests...

Chart title: Why Consumers Friend or Follow Companies

EMARKETER — A September 2009 MarketingProfs survey of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers found that the marketing tactics most often used on social sites are not necessarily the best ones. The most common marketing tactic used on Facebook was attempting to drive traffic to corporate materials through status updates, followed by friending customers...