Internet users around the world are spending more time on social networking sites each year. The Nielson Company, a research group, found that time spent on social networking websites increased 82% between December 2008 and 2009.

As of December 2008, global consumers were spending an average of a little over three hours on social sites, which was up from just over two hours in December 2007. This jumped to more than five and a half hours by December 2009, with Facebook coming in as the most visited site. Additionally, in January of 2010, Nielson found that 116 million of the 203 million Internet users in the United States at that time visited Facebook.

According to Facebook statistics during this same time, the average global user spent an average of 55 minutes on the site each day. Of course, Facebook isn’t the only name in the game, but it is clearly a site to pay attention to if you plan on partaking in social media marketing.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are current must-haves for businesses, entrepreneurs and organizations. But it is important to remember that the landscape of social networking is always changing, with new sites cropping up and gaining ground. That is why more and more business owners are turning to Internet marketers to manage their social media marketing campaigns.