Score Inc has released a study on social media usage in Brazil during the month of August 2010. The study found that Orkut continued to lead Brazil's social networking market, reaching more than 36 million unique visitors (15+ years of age, home and work environments only), while Facebook grew to nearly 9 million visitors, up from just 1.5 million visitors a year ago.Twitter.com also witnessed strong growth, nearly doubling its audience to 8.6 million visitors, with Brazil leading the world in terms of Twitter's Internet user penetration at 23%."Social media accounts for nearly 20% of Brazilians' time spent online, making it one of the top online activities in the country," said Alex Banks, comScore managing director for Brazil and vice president for Latin America. "As the ninth largest Internet market in the world and one of the fastest growing, Brazil offers global marketers large and growing opportunities to reach consumers, with the social networking market representing one of the most efficient ways of doing that.

Orkut reigns as social networking leader in Brazil

In August 2010, more than 36 million Internet users age 15 and older visited a social networking destination from a home or work location in Brazil, with an average visitor spending more than 4 hours a month on social networking sites and viewing 585 pages of content. Orkut ranked as the most-visited social networking destination, reaching 29.4 million visitors, followed by Windows Live Profile with 12.5 million visitors. Facebook.com secured the #3 spot with nearly 9 million visitors while Twitter.com reached 8.6 million visitors.

Orkut displayed by far the strongest audience engagement with visitors averaging 4.6 hours on the site during the month, viewing 657 pages of content on average and visiting the site on 35 different occasions.