Nick Cifuentes

A newly-released report from Nielsen said social networking is consuming twice as much of our online time as any other digital activity.

The statistics said sites like Facebook and Twitter account for 22.7% of time spent on the internet, with social games being the next most frequented activity at 10.2%.

And with all our time being eaten up by Facebook, you’d expect drop-off somewhere, and activities like email and instant messaging are taking the brunt of it. Email activity plunged from 11.5% to 8.3% from June 2009 to June 2010. Instant messaging also took a hit with a 15% decrease.

However, in a less obvious surprise, the mobile market is picking up for the drop-off in email usage as it rose from 37.4% to 41.6% - obviously coming from the rise in smart phones and mobile devices.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams just announced that Twitter will begin a step toward individual website integration with a new platform called @anywhere. The announcement was made during Williams’ keynote speech this afternoon at SXSW.

The new integration will allow developers to plug-in to @anywhere to integrate “basic” Twitter functionality into their website without users needing to navigate away from the page - basically more value without the heavy lifting, as Twitter so kindly put it.  

So picture this, you arrive to the NewYorkTimes.com and right there on the page you will be able to follow reporters and other staff people whose Twitter name is associated with the New York Times. The Twitter blog also suggests that you will be able to tweet about a YouTube video without interrupting it.

There are more @anywhere features planned, as Twitter says the current items are “just the beginning.” This is one-step further for Twitter, who has been needing to integrate a “Facebook Connect” like move that Facebook debuted last year, and is currently dominating the field in when it comes to the idea of a social media operating system.

Most importantly however, Twitter is making this simple; where a person behind the organization can drop @anywhere with a few lines of JavaScript instantly on their website without using any difficult API language that is mostly learned before implementing. During the announcement today, Twitter said that @anywhere will be available to just initial partners at first, those include Amazon.com, YouTube, Yahoo!, bing, Msnbc.com, AdvertisingAge.com, Digg, eBay and a few more!

All future announcements on the @anywhere platform will be made from the @anywhere Twitter account.

Stay tuned for more information as it breaks!