The Nielsen Company studied Americans’ web surfing patterns and found that, when condensing all Internet time into one hour, the most heavily used sectors of the web are social networks/blogs, coming in at 13 minutes and 36 seconds, and a mysteriously colored grey area, coming in at 20 minutes and 36 seconds. The latter is suggested to be the “74 remaining online sectors visited from PCs/laptops.” In related news, all pornography is now shot in black and white.

Here are the most interesting quotes from the article:

“Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company. The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.

“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin.

Below, check out two other Nielsen graphics concerning our web habits.

[Laughing Squid via Nielsen]

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