Time Spent on Facebook up 700%, but MySpace Still Tops for Video
August 27th, 2009 | by Jen |As theories circulate about the actual dollar value of sites like Facebook and Myspace-analysts recently placed Facebook’s worth at $10 billion-there is no question that people continue to gravitate in droves towards social networking and blog sites. In the U.S. alone, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year. In fact, 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 when ranked by total minutes for the month.
“We have seen some very exciting 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 a how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, media and agency insights, Nielsen Online. “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.”