A new worldwide study from ComScore has shown that whilst Microsoft, and in particularly Windows Live Messenger, still dominates time spent online with nearly 15% share of attention. However YouTube and Facebook alone accounted for nearly 10% of the 27 billion hours spent online in September 2009 with 1. 2billion and 1.4 billion hours respectively.

Google Sites are the second most engaging global properties with 2.5 billion hours spent. Yahoo! properties still rank third with nearly 1.7 billion hours spent, however this figure masks a 14% in attention since the same period in 2008.In contrast, Facebook has seen a 193% growth in the same period, making it among the fastest growing web properties around. In the US, Facebook already accounts for over 8% of all advertising impressions. Hitwise stats shows Facebook accounting for just over of 13% of Australian pageviews. Whilst Microsoft was strong overall, there wer key differences between regions.  Microsoft was strongest in Latin America, the Middle east and Africa, accounting for more than a third of all minutes spent online. However Microsoft struggled in North America, where it was beaten by Yahoo! an Google.In the Asia Pacific, Microsoft and Google ran a dead heart with 6.4% of attention. However they were both beaten by Yahoo! (7.9%) andTencent (10.7%). Tencent, a name that would probably be unfamiliar for most, runs QQ, the most popular free instant messaging program in China.  Although completely absent from all other markets, Tencent accounts for 3.3% of global time spent online.