Facebook proves top draw for mobile web users

Facebook accounts for a third of all page views generated by mobile internet users

Facebook dominates the mobile internet in the UK, accounting for almost a third of all page impressions generated each month, according to a new report from the GSM Association (GSMA) and comScore.

The overall figures show that 16 million mobile internet users in the UK spent almost 4.8 billion minutes online during December, generating around 6.7 billion total page views.

Facebook was responsible for 2.6 billion of these page views from almost five million unique users, the report found. Overall, users spent a combined time on the site of 2.16 billion minutes.

Other sites that proved popular included Google, which had almost as many unique users as Facebook at 4.5 million, but far fewer page views at just 894 million and accounting for 395 million online minutes.

Others sites in the top 10, which comprised 70 per cent of total page views and total time spent online on mobiles during the month, included the BBC, Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft.

The figures were collated as part of a new partnership between the GSMA and comScore to launch the GSMA Mobile Media Metrics (MMM) tool designed to provide a full and complete picture of mobile media consumption.

The firms claimed that the MMM service is based on data collected anonymously across networks, and had been designed to help accelerate growth in mobile advertising.

"The underlying principle of MMM is to deliver valuable and actionable reporting tools to the media industry, while respecting the privacy of individuals," said Rob Conway, a GSMA board member.

The figures will be welcome news for Facebook after the social networking giant revamped its site once again to offer improvements to its claimed 400 million users.