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Not that there was ever any doubting the huge popularity of online social networking, but new traffic figures released by Nielsen NetView help drive home the simple fact that growth in the U.S. market remains phenomenal.
Tick... tock... just one more Super Wall post, then bed. Image: fionaandneil/Flickr.
More pointedly, user minutes attributed to social networks and leading blog destinations for the month of April reinforce the notion that online social communication seemingly knows no bounds.
According to Nielsen’s research, Facebook is still top dog when it comes to social networking, amassing approximately 13.9 billion user minutes in April, which is year-on-year growth of 699 percent when gauged against the 1.7 billion it gathered during April of 2008.
MySpace sits in second position on the popularity scale, although the News Corp-owned service has seen its appeal eroded significantly in the last 12 months. In April of 2009, total user minutes logged on MySpace fell to 4.9 billion, which equates to a sizable drop of 31 percent against April 2008’s 7.3 billion minutes.
“We have seen some major growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace,” commented Jon Gibs, Nielsen vice president for online and media insights, in an official statement.
While the quick-in-quick-out structure and singular focus of Twitter means user minutes are unlikely to rival the layered attraction of networks such as Facebook and MySpace, the micro-blogging service still managed to post the largest growth spurt on Nielsen’s chart.
Sitting in fifth place on Nielsen’s results, user minutes attributed to Twitter during April 2009 hit 300 million, which is a miniscule figure compared to Facebook. However, the service’s year-on-year improvement hit a staggering 3,712 percent when viewed next to the lowly 7.8 million minutes it logged in April of 2008.
“Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way, perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space,” added Gibs.
Blogger emerged as April’s leading blog-based platform, sitting in third behind Facebook and MySpace with 30 percent growth and 583 million total monthly minutes, while Tagged.com secured fourth with an impressive 998 percent growth and 328 million minutes.
The remaining players on the top ten list are MyYearbook (269 million minutes), LiveJournal (204 million), LinkedIn (202 million), SlashKey (188 million), and Gaia Online (144 million).
Despite the apparently robust appeal of blogging and social networking, Nielsen is keen to point out that users within the space are notoriously fickle, saying that neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune to the wind of change and the unpredictable whims of users.
“Remember Friendster? Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force?” warned Gibs. “Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment’s notice.”
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