Last month, I asked comScore to run some numbers on traffic to social sites (comScore calls them social networking sites, but they are not all social networks). This month, I asked them to do the same run again for October, 2007. Below are the results, which show both absolute traffic in the U.S. and percentage change where comparable data from October, 2006 is available. I organized them a little bit differently this time. Sites showing year-over-year growth are in the first group (Facebook, Flickr, Digg), those showing declines are in the second group (Geocities, MSN Groups, Xanga), and blogging platforms are in the third group because I consider them a separate beast altogether:
A few takeaways:
—LinkedIn, Digg, Flickr, Facebook, Imeem, and AIM Pages are all growing more than 100 percent year-over-year.
—Wordpress is also on a tear, gaining 1.6 million unique visitors from the previous month alone, more than Six Apart’s one-month gain of 800,000, but still behind Blogger’s 3.9 million (see last month’s post for comparable numbers).
—AOL’s Propeller (its Digg clone) is doing better than expected, with almost the same number of visitors as LinkedIn.
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That’s so terribly enlightening.
It’s interesting that you did this research, when you don’t even have a facebook presence. Why?
So basically, except MySpace, Blogger and Facebook, Geocities is the most visited “social” property on the web. Somehow that piece of info makes me smile
But of course, most of Yahoo! Groups communication happens only by email, and I doubt that data is accounted here. If it was, I bet it would be the #1 “social site”, wouldn’t you say so?
Hmmm.. Why no orkut . Orkut would be in the second or third place
Google left out..
Cheers, Nag
Angelfire is still on the list? I remember using it to build my first website more than 10 years ago! A blast from the past…
What about StumbleUpon?
Hopefully Facebook has information to this research as well. They’d notice that Flickr is doing quite well and maybe Facebook should add some new features to the #1 photo site, like adding the ability to download large versions of friends photos upon approval. Just an idea.
Wow, I stubmled onto a Geocities site the other day and remember being surprised about it “they still exist?” and to see their rankings- geocities, lycos and classmates, all ‘old skool’ are more visited than LiveSpaces.
wonder if this supports the gap theory of two worlds of users - people likely to read blogs like this, and an entirely different - very different - user set.
Slow New Day? Is there a point to this post? No news here.
“Slow New Day? Is there a point to this post? No news here.”
Those aren’t even close to the real numbers either.
In Brazil, orkut is the nº1
What about You Tube? Its as much a social network as anything else on that list, wouldn’t you agree?
Why would an article with such a title only cover US websites? For companies with a global reach and strategy, isnt it much more relevant to cover global reach of sites?
i’m surprised digg is way up there with just a few million users.
Where’s Orkut? Like Rod said, Orkut is the number 1 in Brazil. And its not a small thing…
What about current.tv ?
You will notice these are U.S. numbers. That is why Orkut is missing. ComScore’s global numbers lag their U.S. numbers.
very interesting to not see friendster here. assuming they’re a drop in the bucket
vox is definitely a social network! (apparently one of the “six apart sites”) so it’s funny to see it lumped with the blogging platforms.
Erick,
This is great. In addition to the unique visitors, do you have “total user” information for these properties?
Abhishek
Excellent post! At the first sight, Facebook grows 4 times faster than myspace. When you look at the absolute increase of visitors, myspace has 15929K more and Facebook has 17802K more. The growth of Facebook is not that much difference with my space in the absolute term.
http://web500.us
I send angry complaint to Facebook privacy. They weren’t suppose to sell names to telemarketing spams. I ask facebook to take off my list.
I don’t care if facebook receive less ratings. Facebook is now powerless hype. It’s weak.
run the global numbers….
Why is black planet still never listed as a social networking site? It’s been around since before all these new ones…
Hey, techcrunch…Have you ever try to investigate Facebook privacy scandal?
Try this…Turn your blog into “All the president’s men”. Type fake address, names, etc… you will receive telemarket call.
SEC & FTC should investigate Microsoft buy out Facebook and facebook privacy scandal, security breach.
Google got smart and protect people’s privacy… They never show orkut rankings.
Flickr numbers can’t be attributable to organic growth. The user count exploded this past year because they migrated all the Yahoo Photos users over in May.
Erick,
Thanks for the data. I was actually lookin for something like this. So it saves me some time and effort
Raja
http://www.desiscreen.com
What about Plaxo? I just saw the newish version of that and it sure seems to look like a useful social networking tool to me.
Thanks for doing this. Please keep it up and add whoever you thinks fit.
Seriously, thanks!
As others suggest, it would be great to see the global figures, but also a continental breakdown - say Americas/Europe/Asia. I take your point that global data comes later, but hey, September figures on the above basis would paint the picture.
Cheers.
It is funny you only consider USA for your numbers….i.e: Toronto and London are the biggest users of Facebook…
The only thing is that Facebook has better quality users than Myspace. Most of us here in the UAE/ Australia use Facebook versus Europe which many use Myspace. Go Dubai!!! Maybe ill start dubaibook.com
The problem with panel data…quantcast, for example (another panel data provider) puts Digg at 12 million US uniques / month and Bebo at 1.5 million. So for one, they say Digg is bigger, but Bebo is smaller.
Who do you believe? Well, I like to take all the panel metrics with a grain of salt.
And as for Orkut, they are huge, internationally, but in the US, even our bootstrapped social network gets more traffic (if their rumored 600K US uniques / month is real and not just another panel data error).
Eventually, I hope there will be a way to get a solid metric that’s reasonably close to reality, and not highly suspect.
The SixApart figures can never be accurate as TypePad supports your own URL; comScore has no way of tracking sites using the service with this setup, whereas WordPress.com doesn’t support your own URL (with a very very small number of exceptions). Flawed comparison.
In capable hands, Geocities could become a real player in social networking due to name recognition.
Sad to see it declining due to Yahoo’s reverse Midas touch.
I told you people that this whole social networking thing was a fad!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
These numbers are basically worthless as they’re US-only. Orkut and Friendster have huge global presences and aren’t even listed here. And Facebook was bigger overseas before it got big stateside.
What does “Classmates.com Sites” mean — do the numbers include visits to affiliate sites promoting them?
This is good. I hope you will publish this kind of data every month.
You have imeem.com stats but nothing on last.fm?!?
I’d be interested in seeing numbers for multiply.com next time. It’s not on a lot of people’s radar, but it’s a social networking site, based in the US (Florida) and has been around for a few years.
Jaike,
Blackplanet would be included in the Community Connect sites, but I don’t know if they are aggregating Migente and AsianAve also.
But you are right, I HATE seeing others listed and they have been around a very very long time with features the others are just now adding..
Duncan! “WordPress.com doesn’t support your own URL (with a very very small number of exceptions).”
You said the same thing here, and the product manager of Typepad corrected you:
http://www.alleyinsider.com/20.....-rich.html
It’s not a small number of exceptions, it’s hundreds of thousands:
http://www.google.com/search?q.....dpress.com
If you don’t believe Google, you can ask Quantcast. The first numbers are just the “.wordpress.com” blogs, the second link includes parked domains:
http://www.quantcast.com/wordpress.com
http://www.quantcast.com/p-18-mFEk4J448M
I get the impression you really dislike us.
Digg’s growth is the most impressing, IMHO. It is almost 5 times bigger than one year ago!
Hey, what about Hi5.com? Surely, the’ve got to be up there as well.
#44 Arun - I had the same thought. Where is hi5? Then I remembered that these are US numbers. Though hi5 has a presence in the US, the majority of its traffic is generated from a variety of smaller countries…
I pulled some Alexa numbers (just for relative purposes):
Hi5.com traffic rank in other countries:
Dominican Republic 1
Costa Rica 1
Peru 2
Thailand 2
Mexico 7
Cheers,
Aidan
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com
My bad… I meant #45.
If sites like freewebs (free web hosting) is on the list, then our forumer.com should be there too (forum hosting is more social than web hosting).
But of course, like orkut, if you ignore outside of US traffic than we won’t rank so well.
great list,
they have been around a very very long time with features the others are just now adding..
i didn’t know “Linkedin” , you touch me
Thanks…
where is orkut..????
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