Britons are the 'social networking' champions of Europe, displaying a far greater appetite for websites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo than fellow citizens on the continent.

British internet users spent an average of 5.8 hours a month - about a 11 minutes a day - on such sites, in comparison with their nearest rivals the Germans, who spent 3.1 hours a month (6 minutes a day), according to research.

The French, Spanish, and Italians all spend less than four minutes a day making 'friend requests' and 'poking' one another - the social networking equivalent of saying hello, the figures, from comScore, suggest.

More than three in four regular internet users in Britain - just under 25 million people - are now a member of a social networking site, and make an average of 23.3 visits to their 'profile page' a month.

The figures are skewed by those visit the sites most regularly, however. 'Heavy users' spend an average of 22.1 hours a month on their pages - visiting them more than 70 times - despite accounting for less than a fifth of the overall number.

By comparison 'light users' - who make up about a half of the total - spend just 18 minutes, presenting a challenge for marketers keen to exploit the amount of personal data collected by such networks and target new customers.

"The big question for companies at the moment is how can they use applications that are developed for social networking sites like Facebook for advertising purposes," Rebecca Jennings, an analyst with Forrester, said.

Social networking sites allow members to build and interact with large groups of friends, as well as share content - including photos, videos and music - with one another.

According to comScore, Bebo - a site for younger users - is now the most popular social network in Britain, with 10.7 million visitors, followed by MySpace, with 10.2 million.

Facebook, despite more than tripling its reach in the past 6 months - from 2.7 million to 9 million - is in third place.

comScore takes a regular global survey of more than 2 million internet users - including 60,000 in the UK - who agree to have their internet usage tracked.

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