Last quarter, Facebook was the fastest social network and second in terms of availability, according to SmartBear’s latest social networking website performance data. This is particularly impressive considering the service is still growing very quickly: 800 million active users and 350 million active mobile users as of last month. During this quarter, Facebook also reached a new milestone: 500 million active users in 24 hours.
Facebook has actually been first in terms of speed for all seven quarters since SmartBear launched its Web Performance Index for Social Networks. As you can see in the chart above, Facebook had a 0.73 second average response time in Q3 2011. This is a bit higher than the 0.70 second average it had in Q2 2011.
Despite the minor increase, Facebook is still way ahead of the competition. LinkedIn was second (1.33 second average response time), YouTube was third (1.58 second average response time), Twitter was fourth (2.73 second average response time), and MySpace was fifth (5.09 second average response time).
As you can see in the second chart, Facebook also saw an impressive 99.96 percent availability in Q3 2011. This was actually a 0.02 percent drop over Q2 2011. That may seem like a small dip, and it is, but it was enough for the social network to slip into the number two spot. YouTube reclaimed the number one position with 99.98 percent reliability for the quarter. LinkedIn was third (99.90 percent), Twitter was fourth (99.86 percent), and MySpace was fifth (98.75 percent).
As much as Facebook users complain about constant changes and privacy worries, I have never seen anyone say the site is slow or unreliable.
See also:
- Americans spent 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook in May 2011
- Zuckerberg: 500 million daily active users on Facebook
- Facebook is destroying Google in time spent online (chart)
- Facebook is first with 1 trillion page views, according to Google
- Facebook confirms it now has 800 million users
- Facebook confirms it now has 350 million mobile users
