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First-time stats from M:Metrics, a company that measures consumer consumption of mobile content and applications, report 12.3 million users in the U.S. and western Europe accessed a social networking site with a mobile device in the month of June. (More details in this release.) The data, from a survey of 103,457 respondents in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the U.S., is based on a three-month moving average for the period ending June 2007.

MySpace and Facebook top the list of social networking sites accessed via mobile in both the U.S. and the U.K. (MySpace attracts 3.7 million U.S. and 440,000 UK mobile users. In the U.S., Facebook’s mobile audience is about 2 million, and in Britain, about 307,000.) Rounding out the top three is YouTube in the U.S., with 901,000 mobile visitors, and Bebo in the UK, with 288,000.

“For an increasingly wide audience, social networking sites have become an indispensable part of the digital lifestyle,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics, said in a statement. “With the mobile phone playing a central role in people’s social lives, it’s only natural that social networking sites are working to bridge the gap between the online and mobile worlds.”

Another driver could be the top-notch spot these social networks now occupy on many mobile operator portals. M:Metrics points out the top three U.S. mobile social networking sites also have strong distribution. (MySpace is on the decks of Amp’d, AT&T, Helio, and Nextel; Facebook is on the decks of Sprint, AT&T, Virgin, and Amp’d; and YouTube is on Verizon. In the U.K., MySpace has distribution via Vodafone and Bebo is on the 3 deck. (Ironically, MSN Live Spaces – the number two destination - is absent from all operator portals.)

• Posted in
• Web 2.0, M:Metrics

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