Consumers are increasingly conscious of the information they place on social networking sites with 81% indicating that they think twice before posting something while the average number of friends is put at 195.

These are conclusions of the InSites Consulting Social Media Around the World - study among 2800 internet users in 14 countries.

It also found 79% have become more selective in choosing and accepting ‘friends’ and 74% give thought to which pictures they place online and which ones they do not.

In spite of the more cautious attitude, 87% indicate that their online identity strongly corresponds to their offline identity.

However, interestingly, 13% of consumers however admit to using a different persona online than who they are in reality.

The study by InSites Consulting also shows that 23% of users feel they can more easily express their emotions via social media than in real life.

The study clearly show that consumers are becoming more mature in their use of social media. Users can be themselves, though do so in a conscious manner.A form of online etiquette will increasingly be developed in an organic way by consumers themselves.

Other topline figures:

* 72% of users belong to an average of two social networking groups
* 12% of the interent population are ex-members of MySpace
* 84% of users are only members of personal sites
* Users login two times a day on average
* These uses mostly doing personal – not professional activity
* Connected people have on average 195 friends
* In the UK that figures is 173 friends
* Germans have 113 friends and in France the figure is 95
* In the US the friends figure is 200

The full report is available @ Slideshare.