MySpace Still King, Facebook Growing Faster

Though MySpace still maintains a healthy lead over Facebook in the U.S., there are more indications that point to a shift in favor, according to a recent report released by Hitwise.

In August, MySpace attracted 67.54 percent of the market, displaying a slight decline from July’s 68.23 percent, and an even bigger decline from last year’s 75.04 percent. The social networking site’s year-over-year decline was 10 percent.

Facebook attracted 20.56 percent of the market, an uptick from July’s 19.48 percent, and a rather large increase from last year’s 13.68 percent. The site’s year-over-year growth was 50 percent.

While myYearbook only attracted 1.65 percent of the market in August, displaying growth from July’s 1.58 percent share, the site experienced 256 percent growth from last year’s 0.46 percent.

Tagged was fourth with 1.53 percent in August, followed by Bebo with 0.94 percent.

In terms of the top five paid search terms among social networks, “classmates.com” led the way with 0.03 percent of all search traffic, followed by “classmates” with 0.03 percent, “myspace” with 0.01 percent, “people search” with 0.01 percent and “reunion.com” with 0.01 percent.

In terms of the top five organic search terms among social networks, “myspace” led with 14.96 percent of all search traffic, followed by “myspace.com” with 5.59 percent, “facebook” with 3.72 percent, “www.myspace.com” with 2.30 percent and “my space” with 1.75 percent.

MySpace maintains the most engaged users in terms of average time spent on its site. The social networking leader held its users’ attention for an average of 30 minutes and 32 seconds in August, a 1 percent increase from last year.

Facebook’s users spent 19 minutes and 30 seconds on its site, a 23 percent increase from last year.

myYearbook’s users spent an average of 28 minutes and 57 seconds on the site in August, a 10 percent increase. Tagged’s users spent 24 minutes and 3 seconds on the site, while Bebo’s users spent an average of 26 minutes and 4 seconds on the site.

Source:
http://hitwise.com/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/facebook-visits-up-50-percent-29092008.php