Hitwise and December’s Social Networking Shares

The ongoing changes in the popularity of social networking sites remains interesting. I still think this is market based. We see regional, national and teen/college variations. I am still shocked at the huge growth in teen oriented sites. It’s fun to read some of the backlash against social sites. While it’s critical thinking at its best, it also rings the same as the early days of the Internet and web when folks would ask “why would I want access to that much information?”; “Why woulod I buy anything online?”; etc.
“For December 2007, MySpace.com received 72 percent of U.S. visits among the social networking category. Facebook.com received 12.57 percent of visits and Bebo.com received 1.09 percent of visits. U.S. traffic to all the social networking websites increased four percent year-over-year. MyYearbook experienced the largest gain in market share in December 2007, increasing 407 percent compared to December of the previous year. Facebook and Club Penguin followed, increasing 51 and 48 percent, respectively.

“MySpace and Facebook remain the market leaders among social networking websites, retaining a loyal base of users,” said Heather Dougherty, director of research, Hitwise. “The continued popularity of social networking activities online will drive the interest of marketers seeking to target influential users to approve and advocate their products and services.” ”
Stephen