When it comes to pinpointing the population which most enjoys social networking, new research from conScore shows the Russians to be world leaders.

Visitors in the market spend 6.6 hours on social networks, viewing more than 1,300 pages each a month. The country’s leading social networking site is Vkontakte.ru, which has 59 per cent reach among the total online market, followed by Odnoklassniki.ru (7.8 million visitors), Mail.ru – My World (6.3 million) and Fotostrana.ru (1.6 million). Facebook.com attracted 616,000 Russian visitors, up 277 per cent year-on-year.

In terms of engagement, Brazil came a close second (6.3 hours), followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico and Spain (both 5.3 hours).

The UK ranked seventh, Germany eighth and the US ninth. France was in 16th place and Italy 20th.

More than 734 million people – two-thirds of global Internet users – are now using social networking sites each month.

Mike Read, senior vice-president and managing director, comScore Europe, said: “In a country as geographically large as Russia, social networking represents a way of connecting people from one corner of the country to the other. The highly-engaged behaviour of social networkers in Russia offers significant opportunity for marketers and advertisers seeking to reach these audiences.”