My partners and I attended a conference in Las Vegas a few years back and one of the buzzwords during this conference was social networking, it seems that this has finally come of age.
In November 2008 Facebook drew 200 million unique worldwide visitors; more than 1 in 5 people who accessed the Internet that month visited the site. When sites are that big growth generally stagnates, but in Facebook’s case it’s still skyrocketing. In December, 222 million people visited the site says newly released Comscore stats, a 10.8% month over month growth rate. 22% of the total Internet audience went to Facebook in December.
Facebook now has nearly 100 million more worldwide users than MySpace, which added 4 million new users in December to 125 million total. The page view difference is more dramatic – Facebook had 80 billion monthly page views in December v. 43 billion for MySpace. Just six months ago the sites were about the same size.
Facebook, still a private company, is the world’s default social network. MySpace is still the king in the U.S., but trends suggest that 2009 is its last year on top. By January 2010, at current relative growth rates, Facebook will overtake MySpace as the largest U.S. social network as well.
We reached out to MySpace for a comment on the growth trends. They say “We are laser focused on building a sustainable global business which we measure by profits and revenue – not just eyeballs. In a tough economic climate, our international revenue is up 35 percent year over year and we continue to focus on those markets with the strong monetization opportunities. Additionally, MySpace continues to dominate the U.S. market–where the bulk of online advertising revenues reside–both in terms of monetization and user engagement with more than 76 million unique users and a 40% spike in engagement year over year.”
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