Just fewer than 30 million people used social networking sites in the UK in May, highlighting the role that such technology may play in small businesses in IT across the country, a new survey has stated.

At least one social networking site was used in the course of the month by 29.4 million people, according to recent comScore data.

This averaged 4.6 hours per visitor during the month, with the company noting that people of all ages are accessing the phenomenon which is still gathering momentum globally.

Mike Read, the senior vice-president and managing director of comScore Europe, said: "In fact, advertising on social networking sites has a better chance of reaching these older demographics than site categories such as business and finance, which is a critical insight that might be lost for those trying to optimise their campaign against target audience segments."

comScore is one of the global leaders in measuring IT trends alongside other companies such as Gartner and Forrester.

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.