Facebook Sees 700 Percent Increase In Growth

In the U.S. the total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year, according to a new report from Nielsen Online.


Total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making it the No. 1 social networking site for the month.


“We have seen some major growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace. Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space. The one thing that is clear about social networking is that regardless of how fast a site is growing or how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, online media and agency insights.


“Remember Friendster? Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force? Neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune. Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment’s notice.”


While Facebook is now the most popular social network, MySpace has been doing well with its online video. With 120.8 million video streams, MySpace was the No. 1 social networking destination when ranked by streams and total minutes viewing video on the site, with an average of 38.8 minutes per viewer.


In comparison, Facebook visitors spent only 113.5 million minutes viewing video in April, with an average of 11.2 minutes per video viewer.


“So maybe the better question to ask is who does each site reach–not who is ‘winning.’ What audiences are they drawing and how are they building for the future to maintain the loyalty of their visitors, who to this point have shown little long-term loyalty to any specific platform,” said Gibs.