Nielsen: Facebook growth outpaces MySpace
Facebook's unique audience grew by 1.5 million people in October, according to a report released this week by Nielsen Online. That's five times the rate of larger rival MySpace, which grew by about 300,000.
If the numbers are accurate, it means Facebook, the second-largest social network, continued its surge. MySpace logged 58.8 million unique visitors in October, up 19 percent from a year before; Facebook logged 19.5 million, up 125 percent.
Though the numbers seem to suggest that Facebook is growing at a far faster clip than MySpace (NWS), third-party numbers can be deceiving. Because of the methods companies like Nielsen use to estimate traffic, the official numbers from the sites themselves can differ somewhat. It's also not clear whether the trend will continue as both companies link up with powerful online allies. Facebook last month took a $240 million investment from Microsoft (MSFT), and MySpace announced that it will participate in Google's (GOOG) OpenSocial initiative to build social software on the Web.
Nielsen also released stats that show WordPress.com for the first time edging out TypePad to become the number-two blogging platform behind Blogger. The numbers are below:
Table 1: Top 10 Social Networking Sites for October 2007 (U.S., Home and Work) +-----------------------+----------+----------+----------------+ | Site | Oct-06 | Oct-07 | Percent Change | | | UA (000) | UA (000) | | +-----------------------+----------+----------+----------------+ | Myspace.com | 49,516 | 58,843 | 19% | | Facebook | 8,682 | 19,519 | 125% | | Classmates Online | 13,564 | 13,278 | -2% | | Windows Live Spaces | 7,795 | 10,261 | 32% | | AOL Hometown (TWX) | 9,298 | 7,923 | -15% | | LinkedIn | 1,705 | 4,919 | 189% | | AOL People Connection | 5,849 | 4,084 | -30% | | Reunion.com | 4,723 | 4,082 | -14% | | Club Penguin | 1,512 | 3,880 | 157% | | Buzznet.com | 1,104 | 2,397 | 117% | +-----------------------+----------+----------+----------------+ Source: Nielsen Online Table 2: Top 10 Blogs for October 2007 (U.S., Home and Work) +-------------------+----------+----------+-----------------+ | Site | Oct-06 | Oct-07 | Percent Change | | | UA (000) | UA (000) | | +-------------------+----------+----------+-----------------+ | Blogger | 21,572 | 34,104 | 58% | | WordPress.com | 2,104 | 11,440 | 444% | | Six Apart TypePad | 8,813 | 10,601 | 20% | | tmz.com | 7,107 | 7,805 | 10% | | LiveJournal | 3,366 | 4,260 | 27% | | Xanga.com | 4,760 | 2,741 | -42% | | Thatsfit | 534* | 2,613 | 389% | | Gizmodo | 941* | 2,135 | 127% | | Autoblog | 920 | 1,949 | 112% | | StyleDash | 1,319 | 1,947 | 48% | +-------------------+----------+----------+-----------------+ Source: Nielsen Online * This Web site did not meet minimum sample size standards in October 2006. Projected and average measures for this site may exhibit large changes month-to-month as a result.
I do agree that Facebook is a fast growing social networking media nowadays.
With all the spam in MySpace, many people are staying away from it. Plus, the Facebook apps are interesting.
It has become obvious that Facebook is growing faster than any other social network site, which make it more attractive for any other regular website or blog as a very big traffic source.
This is ridiculous. Why is that one company getting all the headlines? LinkedIn grew almost 200%. You don't happen to mention that if MySpace grew doubled in size, they would have 120 Million members? What if they did it again the next year… 240 then 480?
The expectations of this company are too high and are going to eventually collapse. Sure it's out pacing Live Spaces, but they have a search engine that belongs to the parent company. Maybe you should compare revenue or net income and put an arbitrary PE ratio like 500?
Try to stop making MySpace look so bad, they are 3 times the size of facebook. and have over 6 times the revenue.
Interesting numbers ….. With Blogger and Myspace relationship with Google – Looks like Google is the winner. Again !
I agree. I have 2 MySpace accounts and 1 Facebook account, but I spend the majority of my time each day on Facebook. The only time I go to MySpace is when I want to post glitter graphics to my friends- http://WWW.ALLTHATBLOG.COM