Facebook And MySpace Visited By One In Five Online Britons
Facebook and MySpace are now both visited by one in five Britons online, with the sites receiving 6.5 million and 6.4 million unique users respectively in August.
Almost half (48%) of Britons online (15.3 million people) visited at least one of the ten most popular social networks in August 2007.
| Most popular social networks in the UK – August 2007 – and growth across 2007 | ||||
| Rank | Social Network | Unique Audience (000s) | Active Reach | Unique Audience change since Dec 06 |
| 1 | 6,506 | 20% | 541% | |
| 2 | MySpace | 6,379 | 20% | 20% |
| 3 | Bebo | 4,449 | 14% | 64% |
| 4 | Windows Live Spaces | 2,333 | 7% | -1% |
| 5 | Friends Reunited | 2,112 | 7% | 1% |
| 6 | BBC Communities | 1,545 | 5% | 27% |
| 7 | Flickr | 1,276 | 4% | 20% |
| 8 | Piczo | 851 | 3% | -40% |
| 9 | Yahoo! Groups | 828 | 3% | -1% |
| 10 | WAYN | 669 | 2% | 80% |
| E.g. In August 07, 6.5 million Britons (20% of all active Britons online) visited Facebook; 541% more than did so in Dec 06 | ||||
Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, said: “Three months ago I predicted Facebook would catch MySpace in September this year but its continued phenomenal growth meant it only took until August to achieve this feat. This is particularly extraordinary considering that at the end of 2006 Facebook was one fifth the size of MySpace.
“However, even in the fickle sphere of social networking, MySpace has managed to maintain more than six million visitors in each of the last six months – it will be interesting to see if Facebook can achieve this level of audience retention.”
| Fastest growing social networks* in the UK across 2007 | |||||
| Rank | Social Network | Unique Audience growth since Dec 06 | UA (000s) Aug 07 | UA (000s) Dec 06 | Community |
| 1 | PerfSpot** | 756% (since Apr 07) | 274 | 32 (Apr 07) | General |
| 2 | 541% | 6,506 | 1,015 | General | |
| 3 | 194% | 385 | 131 | Business | |
| 4 | Orkut | 182% | 175 | 62 | General |
| 5 | WAYN | 80% | 669 | 372 | Travel |
| 6 | Imeem | 79% | 125 | 70 | Music |
| 7 | Bebo | 64% | 4,449 | 2,706 | General |
| 8 | BBC Communities | 27% | 1,545 | 1,215 | General |
| 9 | Friendster | 24% | 128 | 103 | General |
| 10 | Tagged | 24% | 301 | 243 | General |
| *Minimum requirement of 125,000 Unique Visitors in August 2007. **PerfSpot had no recorded figures until April 2007 | |||||
| E.g. Facebook’s audience grew 541% from 1 million in Dec 2006 to 6.5 million in Aug 2007 | |||||
Of the fastest growing social networks amongst UK audiences, Perfspot.com had no recorded figures until April 2007; since then it has grown by 756% in just four months – making it the fastest growing social network in 2007 ahead of Facebook, which has grown by 541% across the eight months from December 2006 – August 2007.
Three of the ten fastest growing social network brands are formed around specific interest groups – business, travel and music.
Burmaster said: “The suspicion that the next big thing in social networking could always be just round the corner is illustrated by PerfSpot. It wasn’t even on the social network radar until April of this year but in the last four months its visitor numbers have grown at a greater rate than Facebook has across the last eight months.
“Some, however, have theorised the future of social networking will revolve around specific interest-groups as opposed to the general behemoths that dominate today. The fact that a number of the fastest-growing networks concern specific interest areas, such as business (LinkedIn), travel (WAYN) or music (Imeem), seems to add credibility to this theory.”
Amongst social networks, Facebook accrued the most total time spent by Britons (991 million minutes) followed by Bebo (600 million minutes) and MySpace (540 million minutes).
Virtual world Second life is the leading social network in terms of monthly time per visitor (5 hours 29 minutes) followed by teen community Habbo (3 hrs 6 mins) and Tagged.com (2 hrs 40 mins).
Burmaster added: “Not surprisingly, the most popular social networks tend to rack up the most total time amongst Britons online. Bebo, although less popular than MySpace, accrues more total minutes due to a much higher average time per visitor.
“However, one has to look away from the ‘Big 3’ to find the most engaging social networks. The average Second Life visitor spends an astonishing five and a half hours there – over twice as long as the average visitor to Facebook and almost four times as long as the average visitor to MySpace.”
Recent research from Point Topic revealed that the market for consumer broadband value-added services (BVAS) grew by 81% during 2006 (see Consumer BVAS revenues up 81% in 2006).
Meanwhile, the Office of National Statistics recently published a report showing that the number of UK households connected to the internet has jumped by almost one million in the last year alone, to reach over 15 million (see Household Internet Connectivity Rises To Over 15 Million).