Whee! New numbers on social network usage

(Credit: Compete.com)

The blogosphere simply loves to slurp up social-networking traffic stats, and on Monday we got a nice tasty serving of them with some new numbers from Compete.com for the month of January. The results? Facebook is in the lead, with about 68 million unique visitors, well ahead of MySpace's 58 million. (The two are pegged at 1.1 billion and 810 million page views, respectively.)

This may be the first survey we've seen that puts Facebook ahead of the News Corp.-owned MySpace in U.S. traffic. It also puts Twitter as the third-biggest social-media site in the country by total page views, with only about six million unique visitors but a whopping 54 million views.

Compete's numbers are interesting, because they often are pretty different from other analytics firms'. Here are some clarifications, explained to CNET News in an e-mail sent by Compete's Andy Kazeniac: These are numbers stemming entirely from Web browser data in the U.S. That means that you won't be pulling in any international numbers, where most of Facebook's users are now, or data from widgets or third-party applications, which are how many avid Twitter users access the service. That means that it's likely that Twitter's reach is bigger than the numbers indicate.

What's also intriguing is that there are a few social-media sites, like Flixster and LiveJournal, with relatively low unique visitor counts but proportionally very high page view counts, indicating that they probably have smallish bases of very loyal users.

Also pulling in notable numbers are LinkedIn, with about 11 million unique users, Classmates.com, with about 17 million, and Reunion.com, with slightly under 14 million. On the other end? AOL's Bebo, an $850 million purchase, which Compete.com clocks in as having just shy of three million unique visitors. True, its biggest user bases are in the U.K. and Ireland, but that's not good considering the price tag.

Still, statistics are like tequila shots. Always take 'em with a few grains of salt and a slice of lime, and be warned that they may give you headaches.

[Super2online]

Wow looks as though the early numbers this year from Facebook were dead on. It also appears they are now poised to pull away from MySpace handily. If they ever figure out how to make money from that site, there's going to be some serious millionaires created.

[jpbgmail]

I'm surprised at the low orkut number. It's *wildly* popular in India, Brazil. The potential is huge

[hugoksouza]

OK, I am not saying orkut.com is big, but where is it on this?

[TheWebMix]

I'm not surprised to see sites like Classmates and MyYearbook dropping down the list. More and more people I know have switched over to Facebook as their main way to keep up with people they went to school with. And, even people who never used a site like Classmates are going straight to Facebook to find people.<br /><br />Surprises for me were that Twitter was that high already and that Flixter was that high. I didn't realize that Flixter was as big as it is.

[samfold]

Hi there,<br /><br />responding because of a post on your tumblr blog of a hula hoop in your corridor. In fact, that hula hoop was taken from my apartment by my housemate and left in the corridor to confuse us all in the morning (we did a big clean out last night). ie: You apparently live in the same building as us.

[WeCanDoBIZ]

XING should be on this chart (just) with 151,796 monthly UVs for January.<br /><br />I wonder if any other non-US focused networks are missing? I don't see many on there.<br /><br />Ian Hendry<br />CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ<br />http://www.wecando.biz

[4rs]

Unique visitor counts &lt; high page view counts factor has been on my mind for some time. <br /> <br />This is an interesting circumstance to note in an environment known for accidental/organic onset and explosive growth -- youtube, facebook, etc. -- which can include rapid fade too (Friendster). <br /> <br />These sites that are "unique visitor &lt; high page view" could be "long haul" interests in (macro) ecosystem not known for them. <br /> <br />Also, social sites seem to gestate largely in the U.S., then embraced abroad, portent of saturation and slow down in U.S.

[4rs]

Imeem is #10 and no mention in article. Any comments on Imeem?

[ekalavyab]

You've mentioned monthly visits as page-views...<br />which is wrong.<br /><br />page views will be far higher

[MatthewRhodes]

Facebook has had considerable success in 2008, they've grown consistently and the Compete.com data shows their growth trajectory to be significantly higher than MySpace.<br /><br />I think one of the real successes of Facebook is that they have innovated quite a lot over the last year. They changed their user interface and have been adding a fair number of new features to their offering. This is really essential given the rapid growth in members they've had. As you grow your membership and user base changes. You need to change with them.<br /><br />But Twitter is the real success story of 2008 with incredible growth catapulting them to the 3rd most visited social network.<br /><br />I've written a bit more about this (and what Twitter can learn from Facebook's growth) if anybody's interested:<br /><br />http://blog.freshnetworks.com/2009/02/facebook-is-the-most-visited-social-network-and-twitter-is-third/<br /><br />Matt Rhodes<br />FreshNetworks

[joelmblatt]

Online Networking has reached epidemic proportions. I?m on Facebook for social networking, LinkedIn for business networking, and Sparkbliss for romantic networking. There are things I like and things I don?t, but what matters most to me is privacy. <br /> <br />With Facebook, the proposition is join or seem aloof. Given its pervasive nature, forget about your privacy. When my friend Calvin asked if he should join Facebook, I put it this way ?it depends if you want to fill up your inbox and then allocate the time to respond.? I added ?expect everyone you have ever known from childhood to today to want to be friends and then ask you to join this, vote on this, attend this, play this, and so on.? He was deterred for now, but will succumb. Personally, I avoid being sucked into its online vortex. My approach is to log in about once a week, blindly accept friend invites from anybody and ignore everything else. <br /> <br />LinkedIn offers an extremely productive tool for professional networking; it makes sense for anybody in any kind of business. I use my profile as a virtual public resume; I knowingly relinquish my privacy. However, I manage my account and maintain its content with great discretion. Instead of universally accepting every connection request, I qualify each one. The site offers powerful internal search capabilities and externally your profile is easily found by Google. The downside being savvy sales people will use this vast database to find you and sell you. <br /> <br />While Sparkbliss is similar, it is focused upon romantic recommendations through your private network. You control who see your personal information; trusted friends and family screen for eligibility and make introductions. It is unique by its architecture, which places priority upon personal security and privacy. For example, a Sparkbliss profile can not be searched on the site internally or found externally by Google. This is an excellent alternative for people such as teachers who would rather avoid disclosing personal information on on the public Internet. <br /> <br />While Facebook and LinkedIn pay lip-service to increasing default security and privacy settings, stricter measures would only stunt site growth. Don?t expect policies to change any time soon. Unfortunately, most users surrender control of their personal information without knowledge or consideration. Today, it is incumbent upon the individual to protect themselves.

[4rs]

There is a brute fact that is frequently set aside in discussions of Facebook's phenomenal success which is that it simply isn't a profitable business and there isn't a known plan for how it will ever eventually become profitable. <br /> <br />Somewhat the same can be said now for Twitter, although for some reason I can more easily imagine Twitter becoming viable as a utility of demonstrative worth and hence, viability. <br /> <br />I don't imagine that Facebook will collapse, but I do suspect that investors not intereseted in ultimately actually acquiring it will sooner or later begin to turn away. If the future is like the recent past, Facebook is going to eventually confront a triple witching hour : investors will turn away, advertisers will turn away, and some appreciable amount of users will turn away. <br /> <br />Businesswise, it is unsensible for Facebook to remain "independent" and burning venture capital other for than that the concept of not being "corporate" is meaningful in some vague way to its core user base which buys heavily into the bogus undergraduate communitarian feel of the site. Not making money and without a plan for making money simply cannot go on. The popularity alone can't pay the bills, and the popularity won't last, not like this anyway. <br /> <br />If Facebook had been sold a year ago to some suitor like Google, Yahoo, or MS, then one of those entities could have justified running it in the red for a very long time on account of the value of the site as a utility to a larger and profitable commercial enterprise -- in the manner that Google has been nursing YouTube. <br /> <br />MySpace and Imeem, both which might possibly be scorned by Facebook purists, have labored admirably, each in their own way, to create value and make money out of all this innovation and change. I just don't see what Facebook's mission is other than exploiting the enthusiasm for its own popularity (milking v capitalists) for as long as it can. <br /> <br />It is going to be interesting to see what happens with this.

[sandyviv]

not surprised to see facebook on top of the list. but surprised to see that most of the names is not know to me. it shows that people are accepting new sites. my theory is that youngsters dont stick on to one particular site for long, they get bored soon and are always looking for new exciting sites. i wont be surprised to see facebook going down the list in the next year and it will replaced by some new sites. <br /><br />i do like to browse for new sites and if it attracts my eye i will stick to it till a new exciting one comes.<br />these days im obssesed with a new site called http://atflashback.com. its really exciting and cool. if anyone interested in change do visit my profile http://www.atflashback.com/sandyv1.fb