Social networking is growing almost exponentially, according to a recent survey.

New figures from Nielsen Media Research found that in the US alone, the use of such websites jumped by 83 per cent, with Facebook continuing to dominate the rankings as the most popular website of choice.

However, micro-blogging experts Twitter continue to climb after a major spurt of interest in recent months, with usage time growing from 7.8 million minutes to 300 million minutes between April 2008 and 2009.

Vice-president of online media and agency insight at Nielsen John Gibs said: "The one thing that is clear about social networking is that, regardless of how fast a site is growing or how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favour with consumers."

He added that consumers have shown their willingness to pick up their networks and move their personal details to another platform, "seemingly at a moment's notice", reinforcing the notion of changes in trends in the digital market.

Facebook was established in February 2004 and now has over 200 million active users.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.