NIELSEN WIRE — On average, global web users across 10 countries spent roughly five and a half hours on social networks in February 2010, up more than two hours from the same time last year. While the U.S. boasts the largest unique social networking audience, Italian and Australian web surfers led the way for average time on site with more than six hours each in February. Overall, the active unique audience to social networks grew nearly 30%, from 244.2M to 314.5M in the last year. In the U.S., the average active unique audience grew to 149.M from 115M in February 2009...

INSIDE FACEBOOK — Nielsen is the latest web measurement company to release a review of social networking traffic in 2009, and most of the results aren’t too surprising:  Both the number of users to social networking sites and the amount of time they spent increased substantially, with Facebook leading the way. Here’s our quick take...

ADVERTISING AGE — Technology's influence is widely assumed to have morphed the over-the-fence backyard chat into mommy blogs and Twitter networks. But when moms are seeking product advice, it's not all social-media all the time. A study due out next week from the Parenting Group found that while moms are avid web and social-media users, they still turn to family and friends first, whether by phone, e-mail or in-person, when making decisions about product purchases...

EMARKETER — While mainstream social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have always been free to users, paid social network content models are alive and well. Networks that cater to market niches have particularly thrived on hybrids of paid models and ad-based systems. Some of these, such as LinkedIn, Classmates.com and MyLife.com, are earning at least as much revenue from fee-based content and services as from advertising...

MEDIAWEEK — Social media advertising has stumbled in its current form, and needs new choreography. That’s the blunt message that media consultancy Media Link has for MySpace. Media Link has been advising MySpace since August, following a major executive shakeup at the troubled News Corp. unit. That message might as well be aimed at the entire social media landscape, which generates a disproportionate amount of ad impressions but commands such low prices that some in the industry even speculate it could hinder an expected online advertising recovery. Media Link president Wenda Harris Millard, who’s been directly advising MySpace, said that the site may require a dramatically different approach to advertising—including reducing the amount of ad inventory it serves...