Well, it’s not even close.

According to a white paper from ComScore, Facebook accounts for 5 of every 6 minutes spent on a social networking site (83%). The next highest was Tumblr with 5.7%. Pinterest and Twitter command a very small amount, 1.9% and 1.7% respectively.

According to the report, Facebook leads in share of total time spent on the web with 10.8% – just over all Google sites with 10%. Google sites command the largest audience, however, with 191.4 million people in the U.S.

Long story short: it’s Facebook’s world, and all other social networks are just living in it.

[ComScore via CNET]

December’s smartphone market statistics came out of comScore Wednesday, and the results show the U.S. market warping into a battle between the giants of mobile where there’s increasingly no room for the little guys. In fact, besides an anomaly from LG, every major smartphone manufacturer’s market share declined except for Apple and Samsung.

It should come as no surprise that Apple was the top smartphone maker in December. The company commanded a 36.3 percent share of the 125.9 million smartphones in use in the U.S. Its great adversary, Samsung, is catching up, however, as its share increased to 21 percent from 18.7 percent in September. HTC and Motorola both saw declines, while LG saw a small increase to 7.1 percent. LG’s growth is probably due to the relative success of the Nexus 4.

As for smartphone platforms, Android reigns with a 53.4 percent majority of the smartphone market. It may have a majority, but it also little growth as its control only grew by 0.9 percent. In comparison, iOS grew 2 percent from September to December to have 36.3 percent of the market. BlackBerry and Microsoft both saw declines while Symbian stayed flat.

The U.S. smartphone market is slowly becoming the battleground for Apple and Samsung as other smartphone manufacturers continue to lose more marketshare to these behemoths. I wouldn’t be surprised if consumers started associated Samsung with Android as one in the same instead of two separate entities.

Google Maps had steadily led in mobile app usage until only a few months ago. As seen in the graph above, usage of Google Maps dropped considerably in mid-September, when Apple announced it had dropped the app as its official, built-in Maps app. Usage is picking back up, however, now that Google Maps has been released as a standalone app for iOS.

Google won’t worry too much about losing the top spot to Facebook, though. Of ComScore’s top 10 most-used mobile apps in December half are Google apps, including Google Play, Google Search, Gmail, and YouTube. Other highly used apps include Pandora Radio, Apple iTunes, Cooliris, and Yahoo Messenger.

When it come to engagement on mobile, Facebook really has no competition. Of the time spent by mobile users in apps, a full 23% of it was spent on the Facebook app. Instagram comes next with3%, and all of Google’s collective mobile apps only add up to a 10% share of the time spent in apps. Google and Facebook together account for over 1 out of every 3 minutes spent on mobile apps.

ComScore has just released its smartphone platform market share numbers for November 2012, and the results are not surprising in the least. Once again, Android is in the top spot with 53.7 percent of all smartphones in the U.S. sporting Google’s mobile OS. Apple came in a respectable second with 35 percent. Both platforms saw a small amount of growth from August 2012 with Android growing 1.1 percent and iOS growing 0.7 percent.

Everybody else did not come out of November looking too good. RIM came in a distant third with only 7.3 percent of the U.S. market while Microsoft trailed behind with only 3 percent. Symbian continues its death struggle against certain oblivion with only 0.5 percent. In even worse news, all three saw decreases since August 2012 with RIM’s marketshare decreasing by 1 percent, Microsoft’s decreased by 0.6 percent and Symbian’s decreased by 0.2 percent.

As for the mobile device manufacturers, Samsung is still on top. In November, 26.9 percent of all smartphones on the market were made by Samsung. Apple came in second with 26.9 percent of the market. LG, Motorola and HTC came in third, fourth and fifth respectively.

Just like with mobile OS platforms, only the two leaders saw an increase in marketshare. Samsung’s marketshare increased by 1.2 percent since August and Apple’s increased by 1.4 percent in the same time period. The others all had their marketshare decrease by less than a percentage point.

It should be noted that these numbers are from November of last year. It doesn’t take into account all the new mobile devices that were activated over Christmas and the rest of the December. Windows Phone 8 also launched at the tail end of November so Microsoft’s marketshare may have climbed slightly in December. We won’t know for sure until comScore’s numbers for December come out.

Microsoft sites were up 0.2% at 16.2% of queries, and Yahoo sites were down 0.1% at 12.1%. Ask Network was behind Yahoo with 3% of queries (down 0.2%), and AOL followed with 1.7% (down 0.1%).

There were about 17 billion explicit core searches performed in November, according to comScore. Google sites accounted for 11.4 billion of them. Microsoft sites accounted for 2.7 billion searches, and Yahoo accounted for 2.1 billion. Ask had 506 million, and AOL had 297 million. Again, this is just the U.S.

Of course, Yahoo is actually powered by Microsoft’s Bing. comScore says that in November, 69.4% of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 25.4% of searches were powered by Bing (up 0.4 percentage points).

The most recent week saw three separate days surpass $1 billion in spending, led by Cyber Monday, which was the heaviest online spending day in in history. Things did slow down a bit after that though.

“While Cyber Monday was a high point for holiday e-commerce spending and Cyber Week saw several strong spending days, there was a clear softening in the growth rate during the back half of the week,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “It is likely that, to some extent, holiday spending was pulled forward to the Thanksgiving-Black Friday period given the heightened promotional activity around that time. And some of the softening is a natural post-Cyber Monday lull that we often experience, an effect that may be somewhat more pronounced this year given the additional shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, as the urgency to finish one’s holiday shopping increases we expect to see growth rates pick up again in the next couple of weeks before Christmas.”

“That we are seeing growth come from an increase in both the number of buyers and the average spending per buyers suggests broad-based strength in the e-commerce sector,” said Fulgoni. “It reflects not only the health of the e-commerce channel as more people buy online, but also the health of the consumer who has been willing to spend more online this year than last. It’s particularly noteworthy that half of the online population has made an e-commerce purchase thus far in the holiday season”

The number of buyers is up by 9% to 128.7 million, and the average spending per buyer is up by 5% to $165.90.

“The 2012 online holiday shopping season is off to an encouraging start with a 16-percent growth thus far,” said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. “Recent 5-year highs in consumer confidence and early retailer promotions appear to be serving as wind in the sails for the beginning portion of the holiday season, with consumers opening up their wallets early and often. This spending growth also reflects the continuing channel shift to online as consumers increasingly opt for the attractive pricing, convenience and product selection it offers.”

November 8, a Thursday, has been the heaviest online spending day of the season so far, at $829 million.

comScore believes that online retail spending will hit $43.4 billion for the season, which would be a 17% increase from last year.

“Political News sites served as an important resource for Americans seeking the latest in the 2012 Presidential race, with the category reaching an all-time high of more than 60 million visitors in October,” said comScore EVP Jeff Hackett. “Increased traffic was also seen at Retail sites for those browsing costumes for Halloween and gifts for Sweetest Day, and we even saw signs of an early start to the holiday shopping season at Apparel and Toy sites.”

Google still topped the list with 190 million visitors during the month of October, followed by Yahoo sites with 170 million, Microsoft sites with 169 million and Facebook.com with 149 million.

The Weather Channel was a noteworthy entry, having jumped six spots thanks to Hurricane Sandy.

$16.4 billion has been spent online, this holiday season so far (starting from the beginning of November), according to the firm. That’s a 16% increase from last year. Cyber Monday spending itself was up 17%.

“Despite some news reports suggesting that Cyber Monday might be declining in importance, the day has once again set an online spending record at nearly $1.5 billion,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “However, it is also clear that the holiday promotional period has begun even earlier this year, with strong online sales occurring on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. Now, we shall see the extent to which continuing and attractive retailer promotions are able to boost sales for the remainder of the week.”

The top product categories for growth on Cyber Monday, compared to last year, were Digital Content & Subscriptions, which grew by 28%, Consumer Electronics, which grew by 25%, Computer Hardware, which grew by 22%, Video Games, Consoles & Accessories, which grew by 18%, and Jewelry & Watches, which grew by 17%.

Interestingly, close to half of dollars spent online at U.S. websites originated from work computers (47.1%), according to comScore. That’s actually down from last year. Buying at U.S. websites from international locations accounted for 5.7% of sales.

“The term ‘Cyber Monday’ was coined by Shop.org in 2005 to refer to the significant jump in e-commerce spending that occurred following the Thanksgiving holiday weekend as consumers got back to sitting in front of computer screens at work,” said Fulgoni. “At the time and for several years afterward, Cyber Monday was often misconstrued as the heaviest online spending day of the year, when in fact it barely cracked the top ten days of the season. However, with the passage of time, the day grew in importance as a result of an increasing number of retailers offering very attractive deals on the day and extensive digital media coverage making sure that consumers were aware of them. As a result, Cyber Monday has assumed the mantle of top online spending day for the past two years – a trend we expect to hold once again in 2012.”

Here’s a comparison of online spending for each week of the holiday season, for this year and the previous four:

Experian Hitwise has put out some data on online retail traffic for Cyber Monday. According to them, traffic increased 11% year-over-year, and the top 500 retail sites received over 206.8 million total U.S. visits. For Black Friday, online retail traffic increased 7% versus 2011 as those sites received over 193.8 million total U.S. visits. On Thanksgiving Day, according to Experian Hitwise, online retail traffic increased 6% versus 2011 as those sites received over 192.5 million total US visits.

“So far this past Holiday week of online traffic from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday to retail sites is up 8% for 2012 vs. 2011,” a spokesperson for the firm tells WebProNews. “Amazon.com remained the top visited retail site on Cyber Monday while Walmart received the second most visits. BestBuy was the 3rd most visited site with Target and JC Penney rounding out the top five.”

“Among the top 5 sites, Amazon saw the biggest year-over-year growth at 36%.Amazon.com was the top visited retail site on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” he adds. “Walmart was the #2 site each of those days.”

He also says consumer optimism is at an all-time high for this holiday weekend and retailers could see significant traffic gains for 2012 versus 2011.

“Last year Cyber Monday claimed the prize as the busiest shopping day of the year, growing from 138 million online visits to 177 million total US visits to the top 500 Retail sites, a 29% growth comparing 2011 to 2010,” he says. “Last year, Cyber Monday, Black Friday and Thanksgiving were the top 3 Email Transaction days during the holiday season.”

Online payments giant PayPal saw a 190% increase in global mobile payment volume on Cyber Monday, compared to the same day in 2011. That follows Black Friday, when PayPal saw its biggest mobile shopping day to date, and the company says it saw 44% more payment volume on Cyber Monday than Black Friday. PayPal saw 166% increase in the number of customers shopping with mobile devices on Cyber Monday 2012 as compared to last year. Shoppers in Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York made the most purchases through PayPal on Cyber Monday this year.

Cyber Monday was pretty huge for Etsy too.

Online retail spending reached $41.9 billion for the quarter, and the fourth quarter is where we should see the real spending. It’s the twelfth consecutive quarter, by the way, that comScore has shown positive year-over-year growth. It’s the eighth consecutive quarter of double digit growth.

“The Q3 growth rate of 15 percent growth remained in line with the prior quarter and provided confirmation of the strength in the e-commerce sector, despite a few negative headwinds in the macroeconomic environment during the quarter,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Such performance offers some optimism as we approach the holiday season, especially given recent improvements in consumer sentiment.”

“With the housing market beginning to show signs of recovery in addition to increasing – if still underwhelming – job growth, there appears to be strong enough footing to support a very healthy online holiday shopping season,” Fulgoni notes.

comScore found the top-performing product categories to be Digital Content & Subscriptions, Consumer Electronics, Event Tickets, Apparel & Accessories, and Computer Software. Each of these grew by at least 16% compared to the year ago quarter.

The firm also found that 37% of U.S. consumers say they have engaged in “showrooming” behavior, where they use a smartphone while in a retail store. Google recently shared some interesting stats about this trend as well.

“The survey also shows that despite a slow-moving economic recovery there has been marked improvement in consumer sentiment in the past quarter, although many consumers still remain challenged by economic conditions,” says comScore. “48 percent of U.S. consumers now rate the economy as ‘poor’ an 8-percentage point improvement vs. the prior quarter and the most pronounced improvement since early 2009 (following the worst of the financial crisis).”