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Topic: Social Enterprise

Social network traffic up 11.5 percent; MySpace still dominates

Summary: According to Hitwise, the US market share of Internet traffic to the top 20 social networking sites grew by 11.5 percent from January to February 2007, to account for 6.5 percent of all Internet traffic in February 2007. Perhaps unsurprisingly, MySpace is still the heavyweight in a market made up of featherweights, with an 80% share. Though social networks specializing in music and other media continue to see strong growth.

Steve O'Hear

By Steve O'Hear for The Social Web |

According to Hitwise, the US market share of Internet traffic to the top 20 social networking sites grew by 11.5 percent from January to February 2007, to account for 6.5 percent of all Internet traffic in February 2007. Perhaps unsurprisingly, MySpace is still the heavyweight in a market made up of featherweights, with an 80% share. Facebook is MySpace's closest challenger with 10% of the market.

Market Share of US Internet Visits to Top 20 Social Networking Sites

February 2007*

Rank Name Domain Market Share
1 MySpace www.myspace.com 80.74%
2 Facebook www.facebook.com 10.32%
3 Bebo www.bebo.com 1.18%
4 BlackPlanet.com www.blackplanet.com 0.88%
5 Xanga www.xanga.com 0.87%
6 iMeem www.imeem.com 0.73%
7 Yahoo! 360 360.yahoo.com 0.72%
8 Classmates www.classmates.com 0.72%
9 hi5 www.hi5.com 0.69%
10 Tagged www.tagged.com 0.67%
11 LiveJournal www.livejournal.com 0.49%
12 Gaiaonline.com www.gaiaonline.com 0.48%
13 Friendster www.friendster.com 0.34%
14 Orkut www.orkut.com 0.26%
15 Live Spaces spaces.live.com 0.18%
16 HoverSpot www.hoverspot.com 0.18%
17 Buzznet www.buzznet.com 0.18%
18 Sconex www.sconex.com 0.14%
19 MiGente.com www.migente.com 0.11%
20 myYearbook www.myyearbook.com 0.11%
Note - data is based on custom category of 20 of the leading social networking websites ranked by market share of visits, which is the percentage of traffic to the site, based on Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users. The percentages represent the market share of visits among the websites within the custom category.
Source: Hitwise

Whilst it's hard to envisage anybody stealing MySpace's crown, Friendster, which pre-MySpace was dominant, now has a measly 0.34% share -- reminding us that MySpace's pole position is theirs to lose.

The fastest movers and shakers were both social networking sites that specialize in building communities around music and other media -- Buzznet (up 148.4%) and iMeem (up 145.7%). Other fast growing sites include Hoverspot (up 19.6%) and Bebo (up 17.8%), which both compete more directly with MySpace.

Related post: Social network ad spending in the US could top $2 billion by 2010

 

Topic: Social Enterprise

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5 comments
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  • Where's Multiply?

    Where is Multiply on this list? According to Alexa, Multiply ranked 210 Worldwide as of yesterday and has averaged 303 over the past 3 months. In the US, Multiply is ranked #400, compare that to a few of the others on your list, say "#16" hoverspot.com. hoverspot.com ranks #2,362 in the US and has a 3 month world wide average of #16,351. Reporting systems like Hitwise and Alexa are prone to error, but to gather an accurate measure, going with solely one source is highly inaccurate. From my understanding, hitwise will count www.multiply.com and multiply.multiply.com as 2 separate websites when, in fact, they are 2 different pages on the same site.
    Namesty
    Reply Vote

    • alexas rank

      However, Doesn't alexa rank by their "toolbar"
      justrhymes.com
      Reply Vote

    • I agree

      Multiply does seem an odd omission, perhaps Vox too. My guess is that Hitwise doesn't count them as a pure social network, but more as a blogging platform?
      Steve O'Hear
      Reply Vote

  • Good one lets also add

    Interesting blog...is it possible to add www.justrhymes.com to that list?

    The balance of networking and music at its core.
    justrhymes.com
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Social network traffic up 11.5 percent; MySpace still dominates

    I would be curious to see some numbers on niche specific social networks. Do you have any numbers, either retention based, or unique user based for say the top twenty niche specific site?
    brianf-s
    Reply Vote
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