You already know that social networking sites have been getting huge around the world, but

an annual report out today from comScore shows what exactly is going at a wonderful new level of detail, with surprises for even long-time industry watchers like me.

1 in every 5 minutes of time online is now being spent on social networking sites, up from a mere 6% in early 2007. The sites, led by Facebook, now reach 82% of the worlds internet-using population about 1.2 billion people in total. This growth is happening across countries, with 41 of the 43 countries that the web measurement firm tracks showing penetration of 85% or more.

Within these big numbers, though, all sorts of differences emerge. People in Latin America spend an especially large portion of their time online on sites like Facebook and Twitter 28%, or 7.6 hours per month. Thats much less the case in Asia, where its 11% and less than 3 hours per month. Those are broad averages, and full of anomalies. The Philippines, for example, is actually the most socially networked country in the world, with 43% of users time going to these services, and above 8.7 hours.

Facebook itself is making up the largest portion of all this usage even as all sorts of rivals and alternatives are surging. The service reached 55% of the worlds online population in October, with incredibly high engagement: 3 out of every 4 minutes on these types of sites, and every seventh online minute. For the most part, it has surged into first places across countries that had previously been on rival sites, like Orkut in Brazil.

But Facebook is running out of new users in North America and Western Europe simply because it has so much of these markets already (even though its not running out of users attention). In the meantime, a whole other crop of social sites are booming everywhere, led by Twitter.

The microblogging service has grown by 59% in the past year to reach 160 million monthly unique users worldwide. Professional social network LinkedIn has grown by 55% to nearly 100 million. Easy-blogging site Tumblr is up 172% to nearly 40 million; Chinese Twitter-style site Sina Weibo shows almost identical growth (albeit mostly in China).

Report co-author Andrew Lipsman says this is one of the trends that was most surprising to him about the report. Theres more and more people who want to share around interests, not just the close social relationships.

All in all, many of these market leaders are also showing just how global they are these days, with Twitter and Facebook each now having 80% of their users outside of the US.

The report has all sorts of other data gems, too. Heres a few that jumped out at me:

- Google+ now has 65 million users worldwide. That thing has some legs, even if we dont always see them here at TechCrunch.

- Women continue to lead men in engagement across the world by 2 hours or 30% per month in North America and Europe. This is a long-term trend that comScore has seen across older services like instant messaging. But, men have shown a 10% bump since July of 2010, and they gradually appear to be catching up. A lot of this has to do with age. Usage is about at equilibrium among younger age groups, Lipsman notes.

- Mobile is crucial to usage in many markets and growing, but continues to account for a minority of overall usage. Between a quarter and a third of users in Western markets reported accessing social networking sites at least once a month from mobile devices.

- Ads are still playing catch-up to spending levels per traffic that youd expect to see in other areas.

- Email usage has been declining in usage among younger age groups, a trend thats not likely to change.

This is by no means all of the interesting data in the report. You can download the full thing on comScores site, here. I should note that it deserves credit for doing an especially good job providing easy-to-read data visualizations something that you dont see often enough amidst all the awful infographics out there.

ComScores methodology, considered by many to be the best in the measurement business, includes large-scale opt-in user sampling around the world and across desktop and mobile devices.

Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers By Eric Bangeman | Published about a year ago The privacy issues that have been hounding Facebook may be coming to a head. A report in the Wall Street Journal indicates that the Facebook, along with MySpace, Digg, and a handful of other socialnetworking sites, have been sharing users' personal data with advertisers without users' knowledge or consent.

The data shared includes names, user IDs, and other information sufficient to enable ad companies such as the Google-owned DoubleClick to identify distinct user profiles. Some of the sites in question, including MySpace and Facebook, stopped sharing the data after the Journal asked them about it. The surreptitious data sharing was first noticed (PDF) by researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute

and AT&T Labs in August 2009, who brought it up with the sites in question. It wasn't until WSJ contacted them that changes were made.

Not surprisingly, Facebook appears to have gone farther than the other sites when it comes to sharing data. When Facebook's users clicked on ads appearing on a profile page, the site would at times provide data such as the username behind the click, as well as the user whose profile page from which the click came. "If you are looking at your profile page and you click on an ad, you are telling that advertiser who you are," Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman told the Journal. Advertisers contacted by the paper said that they were unaware of the additional data and did not make use of it.

Facebook has tweaked its privacy policy throughout its history, with the most recent moves to open up more user information to the public drawing heavy criticism and FTC complaints. Users have also had a tough time navigating the site's often-Byzantine privacy controls, which has led to a trickle of user defections. With these latest revelations about Facebook ignoring industry standards, not to mention its own privacy policies, that trickle may turn into a torrent.

Update: want to know how the data sharing works? We explain.

App-Happy with Android: The Most Popular Android Apps by Age December 12, 2011 Facebook and apps from Google like Gmail and the Android Market are the most popular smartphone apps among Android owners 18 years and older in the U.S. according to Nielsens latest research on smartphone usage. To rank mobile apps by active reach, that is, by the percentage of Android owners who used the app within the past 30 days, Nielsen analyzed usage data from its proprietary device meters on the smartphones of the thousands of consumer panelists who agreed to be part of Nielsens ongoing Smartphone Analytics research.

Staying Social Facebooks popular app is the most active among Android owners 18-24 and 25-34, who both hover at around an 80 percent active reach. Additionally, more than three quarters of users 35-44 used the app recently as well.

Googles YouTube app gets heavy usage from Android smartphone owners 18 -24: 64 percent have used it in the past 30 days, compared to 56 percent and 51 percent of 25-34 and 35-44 year olds. A preference for media apps with a social dimension (e.g. Words with Friends) among the 18-24 set is also reinforced by their sizable usage of music and video apps (e.g. Pandora) compared to older demographics.

Play Time Not just for the kids, the ubiquitous game, Angry Birds, appeals more to those 35-44 when compared to other age groups: 35 percent of them have used the app in the last 30 days, while only 22 percent of those 18-24 and 29 percent of 25-34 year-olds launched the game.

Apps and More for Sale Apart from gaming, the 35-44 segment demonstrates a greater inclination to shop using the Amazon AppStore: 24 percent of them used the app in the last 30 days, while only 14 percent of those 18-24 did

the same. Groupon appeals more to those 25-34, not even making the top 20 ranking for those 18-24. A similar trend was found on Google+: active reach was higher for those 25 and older when compared to the 18-24 demographic.

Facebooks Android app is the most popular app in the Android Market across several age groups aside from the Android Market app itself. Thats according to new research out today from Nielsen that reports on the percentage of Android owners that have used an app during the month of September.

Facebooks app hit 80% penetration in both the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups, and was only slightly less among 35-44 year old users, with 77% usage. Those numbers are higher than all other non-Market apps, including Google search, YouTube, Gmail and gasp! even Angry Birds.

Heres a look at Nielsens overall Android app usage statistics: