This past December we reported on how Facebook was coming up on Blogger to steal its top spot among social media sites when measured by total unique visitors worldwide.
Now, it appears as though Facebook has finally done it. Data from comScore, which unfortunately goes only through December 2008, shows how Facebook’s visitors (221 million) basically matched Blogger’s (225.5 million) by the end of the year. That’s a gap of just 4.5 million versus the gap of 21 million that existed in November. Assuming Facebook’s upward trend continued in January (and Blogger’s remained flat), the social network sits on top of the roost now.
Facebook stands out from the others not only because it’s the most popular; it’s also the only one showing consistently healthy growth. Chris DeWolf in a recent interview with Charlie Rose said how he doesn’t expect Facebook to pass MySpace by 2010 in terms of U.S. unique visitors (as we’ve predicted in the past). But that prospect is still inching towards reality, as shown by the graph below.
What about QQ.com, with 300 to 400 million accounts?
Think OUTSIDE of the US and Europe for once guys, Asian countries and Asian people are the majority.
http://www.adri...r-that-is-asia/
Who cares about “users” — the real metric is uniques and ‘active users’.
Or how about making money? No? No one seems to care about that anymore?
An important metric is $revenue per user, or $revenue per unique.
With every million extra users, facebook’s server costs increase by $1million, so they need to squeeze more money out of those users. As at the moment they aren’t delivering the ROI needed for Adwords-like financial success.
QQ.com made $523 MM in 2007.
Yes, but are they making money off of all these users?
I can quickly get one billion customers if I sell dollar bills for 50 cents each, but that is not a business strategy.
“It’s all about the eyeballs” you say?
As I wrote in my blog, whenever you hear of a company substitute a bad metaphor for its business strategy, it is usually time to run for cover.
http://smartbab...ategy-save.html
Agree wholey (sp??) – try matching this metaphor with the company with the bad business model – “The YouTube for Documents”
US and Europe sites get way more money per visitor than Asian sites. I’d say at least 5x more.
China’s Economy is on the rise, and they soon will have the most English speaking people in the world.
There is a new Rome on the horizon and it doesn’t give two shits about Silicon Valley or the US.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the US and Canada equally, but you have to open your eyes to the world. Stop thinking of your 4 block radius around your house and city.
The world is a big wide open marketplace ripe for the picking.
China isn’t going to be the new Roman Empire.
They are different to the US, they will increase in power but they lack a lot of things like free press, creativity, individualism etc. that allows people to create truly great and innovative companies.
Not to mention that they have no copyright or intellectual property laws to speak of so the motivation to create great products is severely reduced.
They are amazing at churning out masses of high tech products, mostly designed in Europe and America. Maybe they will improve and create more innovative areas of their economy, but I think that will be a real struggle for them, as the qualities that most Chinese aspire to are hard work and putting in many hours rather than creative genius or incredible product design.
It is interesting to see Orkut in this trend report. Bulk of the users of Orkut are from India and Brazil. As of now, Facebook is not very popular in India but is slowly catching up with Orkut. If Facebook manages to establish itself among the young and increasing number of internet users in India, it will be the undoubted leader in social media space.
I am seeing sudden rise of facebook in india…orkut looks very plain compared to facebook
orkut is banned in middle east facebook not…may be these mullas still didn’t hear abt facebook yet
I don’t understand the second plot. The axes are the same as the first plot, but the data is different. Does it mean “total unique USERS” instead? I don’t get it. Plus, I don’t know if Blogger and WordPress are social media sites. I guess so, but the “social” aspect just isn’t there. It’s more feed dependent, right?
And… umm… where’s Twitter?
the 2nd plot is for the US, myspace is still #1 in the US
the 1st one is worldwide.
and as for twitter, it isn’t worth anything compared to facebook
The first graph is global. The second is U.S-only.
I agree @beeker41… where is Twitter on this graph?? I always assumed FB would come out further than MySpace. Too much spam!
I can honestly see Facebook and Wordpress being number one and two respectively pretty soon, though not sure in which order.
Being slightly biased as I don’t have a MySpace account, I don’t see going anywhere other than down in terms of growth and visitors. iTunes has the potential to weaken it’s grip on social music and in terms of ‘culture’, I would imagine Facebook will chip away at this too.
Do any of them make any ca$h??
What does facebook have that the other one’s don’t?
What is it that attracts people to facebook?
And what other site has a chance?
1. actual friends, not just spam lists.
2. simple, controlled feed. not too much, not too little.
3. trusted environment.
Congrads to Mark, Sheryl. (see photo profile: http://media.te...k-x-google.html)
That said, there is space for Twitter, Myspace, and others as open networks – for other uses.
As the old/traditional social networking sites, facebook has all functionality that are common and all things mentioned by DJ above. And getting a lot of applications that people wont find in most traditional social networking sites.
So the real creative power behind facebook is the fact that creating an online platform that connects developers/companies with its users via the so called facebook applications.
how and why is blogger tops?
It’s Googlicious.
(Did I just say “Googlicious”? Shoot me.)
Once crackbook figures out the music aspect it will be put myspace out of it’s misery. or maybe another site will come out solely dedicated to music, who knows.
look at lives spaces tank…
No surprise. It’s terrible…
so we actually have no idea whether facebook is tops or not. hilarious.
google maps was about to catch mapquest a couple of months ago and then mapquest pulled away again.
what’s the point of this blog?
I was thinking that too! Especially as we’re looking at the run up to Christmas here where you’d think people would use something like Facebook to keep in touch. I’m not saying the possibility isn’t there, but I think this post is jumping the gun a bit.
Using comScore as a source from this story is retarded, their numbers are nothing short of ‘bullshit’.
*for
The truth is this began many months ago and comscore’s data is a lagging indicator like always:
http://www.ebiz...cial-networking
The unique viewers stat is important because it translates to potential $$$. The advertisers will go to where the people are, that’s how the philosophy of free got started on the net. Why do you think these start ups take out so much VC money without earning any revenue at first? It’s not out of the goodness of their hearts – I know that much.
http://www.zrdavis.com
More or less Facebook and Google are taking over the world… w00t!
Blogger is not a “site” in the same sense that FB is anyway. So this is non-news. FB has been on top of the relevant universe for a long time.
http://www.face...efacebookeffect
Facebooks rocks. Everyone I know on Facebook love it.
Do I have to Facebook?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t think anyone read your whole comment and then clicked on the link.
so what is next?
My vote is for Friendfeed- it just needs to be a little less techy.
May be Blogger should add social networking features, like Wordpress-Buddypress
Joelmblatt, you bring up some valid points that I think we all consciously or subconsciously ponder. Like you, I use LinkedIn and facebook. I have a basic back ground on linkin that isn’t too informative, a trade between privacy and exposure I’m willing to take at the moment. I try to stay updated using This up-to-date digital security site on privacy issues.
Facebook is rocking .
I found the same topic on this URL .
http://www.zahi...al-media-sites/
Facebook will be a license to print money. You don’t get 200 million users and not make money. There are several reasons why i don’t see it can fail – 1. it gets integrated with people’s lives – they meet people, plan things, post pictures, update each other. It converges lots of different services. Nowadays, my preferred method of sharing contact details is to point them to facebook.
2. Frequency of return. Facebook is addictive. People who develop any kind of social graph are going daily at least, or more frequently. Some even run it in the background.
3. Cost of switching. I have about 150 friends, over 100 pictures, 30 groups, videos etc. The hassle of moving all this stuff elsewhere puts me off doing it. Retention should be high.
Also, Facebook’s mechanism of engaging users for advertisers via product pages is a unique and scalable concept.
I would bet money that FB will pass MySpace US visitors by the end of 09.
Clearly indicates that facebook is going to dominate social network arena for long time, I do not see twitter in this list of social network sites.
No surprise that Facebook is top dog now. It’ll be interesting to see what this graph looks like a year from now. I suspect the players will be different.
Follow: http://www.twit...er.com/youpolls
I was surprised that Twitter wasnt’ even on the list. It will be very interesting what the stats are a year from now or two. I think you will see a rise in Twitter for business networking and social causes. Facebook will remain a thing of social networking among friends and family. Myspace will peter out.
Listen, the crux of the matter is that whoever gets a handle on decent and consistant digital security over time on a dependable level will be the winner.
http://www.justaskgemalto.com
This is a good stat you have provided, Mark. The report is highly informative and very helpful to those who would like to conquer the internet .
Interesting article. Thanks ~
I cited this post in my blog …
http://www.pixe...og.blogspot.com
I think Facebook needs to give Gen Y a big hug for causing this switch.
http://adjix.com/en75
My question is, will the Gap widen or will it still stay relatively close (between MySpace and Facebook). My theory is a exodus is coming to MySpace, they need to make changes fast. What do you all think?