YNOT – A new report from markets analyst Nielsen indicates consumers are using online social media not only to connect with each other, but also to connect with businesses, find products and services, and document where and when they make purchasing decisions.

Nielsen’s Social Media Report looks at trends and consumption patterns across social media platforms in the U.S. and other major markets, exploring the rising influence of social media on consumer behavior.

Highlights include:

• Social networks now account for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the internet.
• Americans spend more time on Facebook than they do on any other website: more than 53 billion total minutes during May 2011 alone.
• Tumblr is an emerging player in social media, nearly tripling its audience during the past year.
• Nearly 40 percent of social media users access social media content from their mobile phones.
• Internet users older than 55 are driving the growth of social networking through the mobile internet.
• Online adult social networks are 12 percent more likely than their non-social-networking peers to shop online: 70 percent of active online social networkers shop online.
• Across a sample of 10 global markets, social networks and blogs are the top online destination in each country, accounting for the majority of time spent online and reaching at least 60 percent of active internet users.

Social network users are split roughly down the middle between males and females and are distributed evenly across all economic strata, according to the report. The market for businesses is potentially enormous, Nielsen analysts noted, but in order to take advantage of the social media phenomenon, marketers must learn to listen to consumers and then respond appropriately.

“Innovation around what consumers want is essential, but identifying what consumers want requires listening,” a Nielsen spokesperson wrote on the company’s NielsenWire. “The explosion of social media intelligence offers a vast opportunity to listen and engage with customers to shape products and services that tap into unmet demand.

“To win in this new business model, a company must stop fine-tuning the supply chain and shift to an information model built around the rapidly changing demands and needs states of their most profitable consumer groups,” the writer continued. “It means an end to constantly pushing products to consumers with one-way advertising and move to a new model where adding customer value, transparent two-way feedback loops and conversational skills are the focus.”