comScore has published a report claiming that the mobile social networking audience grew by 44% across the five largest European countries – the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy – in the last year. That means 55.1 million people checking social networks or blogs from their phones in September this year, up from 38.4 million in September 2010.
The new figure is 23.5% of the total mobile audience in these five countries, showing plenty of room for growth. 31.3 million of these people accessed social sites from their mobile browser, while 24.2 million used mobile apps – up 31% and 101% respectively, with seemingly only a small crossover between the two since they total 55.5 million.
comScore breaks down these figures for four services in particular. Facebook had a total audience in the EU5 countries of 39 million in September 2011, up 54% year-on-year. Twitter is second with 8.6 million – although that does not include access through third-party apps like Tweetdeck – up 115% in the same time period.
comScore says that Spanish social network Tuenti attracted 2.3 million people in September, up 58% year-on-year, and ahead of LinkedIn’s 2.2 million (up 134%).
“Over the past year we have seen social networking use grow rapidly among mobile users across Europe, driven largely by the growth in smartphone adoption, making it easier than ever for users to stay connected and engage in social activities while on-the-go,” says Jeremy Copp, comScore Europe’s VP for mobile.
“More notably, the rate of growth in daily social networking usage has surpassed even the rate of growth in total social networking adoption among mobile users, suggesting that the behavior is becoming even more ingrained into people’s daily mobile lives.”
comScore also has some good news for brands, claiming that 44.3% of mobile social networkers in these five countries reported reading posts from brands, organisations or events. The figure for celebrities and public figures was 41.6%.
