Opera: Facebook, vKontakte lead mobile social networking

Social networking site Facebook and its Russian counterpart vKontakte are the most visited social networks for Opera Mini users according to browser developer Opera's latest State of the Mobile Web report. Opera reports that the total number of Opera Mini browser users who visited Facebook grew more than 693 percent in 2008--vKontakte usage increased almost 910 percent last year, which the firm credits to the popularity of Opera Mini in Russian-speaking countries. From a global perspective, Friendster is now the third most-visited social networking site by Opera Mini users, experiencing 670 percent growth in 2008--MySpace ranked eighth overall with 618 percent growth last year, although it placed second in the U.S. behind Facebook.

In all, Opera Mini users viewed more than 6.4 billion mobile web pages in December, a 13 percent month-over-month increase. Opera Mini users generated more than 93.8 million MB of data for operators worldwide, up 13.2 percent from November 2008 totals--Opera notes that data in Opera Mini is compressed about 90 percent on average, meaning that if this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 938 million MB of data in December.

For more on Opera's State of the Mobile Web report:
- read this release

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