Some social networking statistics

Until a just a year ago it was the blog that seemed to be commanding a great deal of statistical Internet based research.

The year 2007, however, appears to be the year in which interest in social networking websites appear to have surpassed previous attention vested in rise of blogs and blogging circa 2004 to 2007.

An example of research into the rapid up-take of social networking sites is provided by Comscore (see figure for more details - visit my blog if you are reading this posting in any other form).

Details summarised by Comscore include the following:

- The European social networking community stood at 127.3 million unique visitors in August – reaching 56 per cent of the European online population.

- U.K. participation in social networking usage proved to be the highest in Europe, with 24.9 million unique visitors – 78 percent of the total U.K. online population – now belonging to the country’s social networking community.

- Usage of social networking sites in the U.K. proved heavier than the European average in terms of hours spent, pages viewed, and the number of visits per month.

- The average visitor to social networking sites in the U.K. spent 5.8 hours per month on those sites in August and made 23.3 visits.

- This was a significantly heavier usage level than in France, which averaged 2 hours per month and 16.8 visits per visitor, or Germany, with 3.1 hours per month and 13.8 visits per visitor.

For more details see U.K. Social Networking Site Usage Highest in Europe.

How do working conditions compare across Europe?

A new report from the European Foundation provides a comprehensive overview of the state of working conditions across 31 countries in Europe.

The survey (the fourth of its kind) concentrates on workers’ responses to a wide range of issues such as work organisation, working time, equal opportunities, training, health and well-being and job satisfaction.

The report is said to present a very valuable insight into how European workers experience and assess their working lives and working conditions.

Moreover, the five-year cycle of the survey provides an effective means of tracking the impact on working conditions of critical factors and events over a period of time.

Based on workers’ responses, it paints a broad and varied picture of the physical, intellectual and psychological dimensions of work and its impact on personal fulfilment and work-life balance.

To view the report click on the following web-link: Fourth European Working Conditions Survey (Parent-Thirion, Agnès; Fernández Macías, Enrique; Hurley, John; Vermeylen, Greet).

Investment and the knowledge economy

The end of last week saw the publishing of an other paper from The Work Foundation on the subject of "knowledge economy" (see previous report).

The authors of the paper are critical of the level of investment in the knowledge economy and how companies implement technological innovations.

Both are said to be factors in how economies perform.

Figures on investment include:

Between 1994 and 2004, research and development spending as a share of GDP across the EU15 (there are no comparable figures for the EU25) increased by less than 0.1 per cent – and actually fell in France, the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland. In 2004, the US invested 2.7 per cent of GDP in research and development, compared with 1.9 per cent in the EU15.

For more details see a press release here and the actual paper at - The Knowledge Economy in Europe (Ian Brinkley and Neil Lee).