Data on Social Networks

Learning About Social Media from Your Desk

In June, Advertising Age reported on the growth of online social networks (June 11, 2007, page 14). Here are some key points they made.

MySpace = 57 million unique visitors
Largest and most diverse of the social networks. Audience is still growing. Unique visitors up 49 percent in the last year. Airs Fox TV shows and is a partner in NBC-News Corp. joint venture.

Facebook = 14.4 million unique visitors
Opened up membership last year. Unique visitors up 152 percent over the past year. Claims 85 percent of market share at universities, but more than half of users are out of college. Fastest growing group is 25 and up. Founder built the site while at Harvard. Recently started allowing developers and advertisers to create applications and widgets for use in Facebook.

Bebo = 1.7 million unique visitors
Unique visitors up 109 percent since last year. Has a younger audience than the previous two sites. Popular in Texas and the U.S. Midwest. International expansion is expected.

Gather = 1.7 million unique visitors
Average age is 42 and 72 percent of audience has a college education. Grew 11 percent in May alone. Trying to become more portal-like with content from Harvard Medical School and soon-to-launch partnership with CareerBuilder.com.

Friendster = 1.3 million unique visitors
Ad Age says this was the original social network (though Wikipedia gives the honors to Classmates). Experiencing a small resurgence. U.S. visitors doubled in the last year. But time on the site and page views are down. Still carries some kind of stigma.

Flixster = too small to count
Median age is 18. Focuses on movies. Currently trying to grow the audience before tending to making money.

Ad Age states that while MySpace is in front of them all by far, others are growing faster.

Note: Ad Age did not report on Zooped, which was mentioned by a commenter to my previous post. I had never seen it until tonight. It has quite a variety of features, including business networking. But I have to admit, I was a bit creeped out by someone’s raunchy profile photo on the home page.