A new report has suggested that social networking sites are fast becoming a "mainstay" of the online experience.

InsightExpress stated that 43 per cent of the US population use a networking tool, such as Bebo or Facebook.

Commenting on the findings, Drew Lipner, the group director of the digital media measurement team at InsightExpress, said: "Recognising the rapid growth of social networks and social networking audiences, advertisers have focused on creative engagement and how to apply their brands within a new environment."

The company added that Facebook and MySpace are the most popular choices when people come to choose a social network, with 46 per cent of MySpace users and 36 per cent of Facebook users having just one account.

Facebook has the highest number of people adopting four or more other social networking profiles elsewhere on the web, it was added.

It was recently found that most users of such websites prefer sites which their close friends were on and had recommended to them, according to Ofcom's Annex 3: Social Networking Qualitative research report.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.