Facebook and vKontakte are the most visited social networks for Opera Mini users, according to Opera's latest State of the Mobile Web report.

Unique Opera Mini users of Facebook grew more than 693 percent in 2008. Owing to the popularity of Opera Mini in Russian-speaking countries, vKontakte is the most popular social network overall, with usage of the site having grown almost 910 percent in 2008.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for mobile advertisers and marketers," said Thomas Ford, Los Angeles-based communications manager for Opera. "The potential to include location data will open a new era for advertisers.

"The growth of social networks and the mobile Web indicates advertisers will have new ways to utilize traditional online ads as well," he said.

Opera Mini users viewed more than 6.4 billion pages in December. Since November, page views have gone up 13 percent.

Opera Mini users generated more than 93.8 million MB of data for carriers worldwide. Since November, the data consumed went up by 13.2 percent.

Data in Opera Mini is compressed 90 percent on average. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 938 million MB of data in December.

Page views have increased to almost 360 pages per Opera user, per month.

"People use their phones for communication," Mr. Ford said. "It makes sense that they want to maintain contact with their friends on the go, through the multiple methods available to them on their handsets, including the Web

"Having high-quality browsers on phones and growing awareness of the mobile Web is also helping drive use of mobile social networking," he said.

While not specified in Opera's report, the core demographic for mobile social networking is broader than one might think.

"We don't track demographics for individual sites through Opera Mini, but what we can say is that social networks are the key destinations for Opera Mini users on a global scale," Mr. Ford said. "More than 60 percent of traffic in countries like the U.S. and Indonesia and 40 percent of all traffic globally from Opera Mini goes to social networks.

"We do know the general demographics of Opera Mini though," he said. "We have predominantly male users ages 18 to 27."

Report findings
Opera's first State of the Mobile Web examined social networks. In this month's report, Opera returns to review the top social networks in key countries.

Globally the top 10 social networks for Opera Mini users are (ranked by unique users):

1) vkontakte.ru -- 909 percent growth in 2008
2) facebook.com -- 693 percent growth in 2008
3) friendster.com -- 670 percent growth in 2008
4) orkut.com -- 297 percent growth in 2008
5) odnoklassniki.ru -- 545 percent growth in 2008
6) peperonity.com -- 397 percent growth in 2008
7) hi5.com -- 373 percent growth in 2008
8) myspace.com -- 618 percent growth in 2008
9) mamba.ru -- 1,056 percent growth in 2008
10) mocospace.com -- 835 percent growth in 2008

According to the Opera report, the top 10 mobile sites in the United States based on number of unique users are:

1) google.com
2) facebook.com
3) friendster.com (up from 6)
4) myspace.com (down from 3)
5) wikipedia.org (down from 4)
6) gamejump.com (up from 8)
7) yahoo.com (down from 5)
8) my.opera.com (up from 10)
9) youtube.com (back on the list)
10) nytimes.com (down from 7)

Various sites moved around in the rankings, especially Friendster, which jumped from position 6 to position 3.

In the United States, Facebook beat out MySpace thanks to an impressive growth rate during the year, with unique users growing 1,632 percent, while MySpace user growth was less than 52 percent.

"In the U.S., we see Facebook and MySpace use exploding," Mr. Ford said. "However, in some of our major countries for Opera Mini usage, local social networks proliferate.

"The U.S. is a tech leader, but mobile phone penetration is happening around the world faster than PC penetration," he said. "This also speaks to our message of One Web.

"The same sites that are popular on desktops are popular on mobile devices."

Global phenomenon
Facebook continued its impressive performance in other English-speaking countries.

In Britain, Facebook gained 536 percent to become the most-visited social network for Opera Mini users in that country. South Africa also had Facebook as its top social network.

Outside of the Anglophone world, Facebook had impressive performance in Egypt, as usage jumped more than 3,400 percent.

All was not lost for MySpace, however. In Germany, MySpace was the strongest of all the social networks, growing 492 percent in 2008.

Just as on the wired Web, Orkut was the most popular in India and Brazil, while Nasza-klasa was the most popular in Poland.

Opera cites this evidence to support its belief that there is only one Web, which is accessed through a variety of devices.

"We believe that there is fundamentally One Web," Mr. Ford said. "That is, the same Web sites and Web services people use on one device, like a PC, they will use on other devices, such as mobile phones.

"One Web is also our stance against technologies that fragment the Web, such as WAP," he said. "We believe all devices should have equal access to the full Web."

Opera Software ASA claims to have redefined Web browsing for PCs, mobile phones and other networked devices.

Opera offers cross-platform Web browser technology.

Opera Software is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices around the world.

Opera has various content partnerships and search partnerships, but the company does not use a particular ad network or have advertisements in Opera Mini.

In the report, Opera made the following optimistic predictions for 2009:

"Facebook will continue to expand its reach around the world, including non-English-speaking countries.

"In some countries, however, local social networking sites will continue to be popular.

"The mobile Web usage gap between developed and developing nations will continue to get smaller, and more developing nations will be represented in Opera's top-20 list of countries as mobile Internet connectivity becomes more important there.

"In light of the global economic downturn, we might expect mobile Web use to slow down in 2009.

"On the other hand, consumers might use older handsets for a longer time instead of purchasing expensive smart phones, in which case we would expect Opera Mini usage to increase, given Opera Mini's ability to access the full Web on low-powered devices.

"As such, we are optimistic that growth will be as vigorous in 2009 as it was in 2008."

Who could have predicted that social networks would be the most important segment driving consumers to access the Internet with their mobile device?

"Social networks are helping drive sustained growth of One Web," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera, in a written statement. "Despite prevailing economic conditions, we expect the use of the Web through mobile devices will continue to grow in 2009.

"More people want access to the Web on a global scale," he said. "With extra capacity in both developed and developing nations, we expect to see more people come online using a mobile phone than any other device."