Facebook Grabs Soc Net Share

MySpace, Twitter fall behind

Reprinted from eMarketer - Not only has Facebook surpassed MySpace as the leading social network in the US, it has moved far ahead in terms of market share of US social networking site visits.

According to September 2009 data from Experian Hitwise, almost 59% of all social network category visits were at Facebook, compared with just over 30% for second-place MySpace.

Top Five Social Networking Sites Among US Internet Users, Ranked by Market Share of Visits, September 2008 & September 2009

That amounted almost to a tripling in share for Facebook year over year, while MySpace dropped 55%.

Twitter, in fourth place with 1.84% of social networking site visits in September 2009, posted a huge increase over September 2008. But reports of a Twitter slowdown are bolstered by the fact that the site actually lost share since August 2009, down 0.11 percentage points.

Time spent on Twitter was down year over year, by 56%. Average time spent on Facebook was up while MySpace dropped, but MySpace remained in the lead. Users surfed the site for an average of nearly 26 minutes in September 2009, as opposed to the 23 minutes spent on Facebook.

Average Time Spent on the Top Five Social Networking Sites* Among US Internet Users, September 2008 & September 2009 (mins:secs and % change)

Experian Hitwise also reported that overall, US Internet users decreased their time spent on social networks by 20% in September 2009 compared with September 2008.