Is Social Networking growth heading in the wrong direction?
The way the media portrays Social Networking websites it would seem like they were taking over the world. Facebook has a valuation in the billions, AOL bought Bebo for $850 million and of course you have the News Corp. monster that is MySpace. Even though the media loves to talk about Social Networking websites, has all the buzz helped to continue the exponential growth or has growth topped out?
Utilizing Compete’s free web analytic tool you can get a clear snapshot of what is going on within the Social Networking world. The two giants are of course MySpace and Facebook with MySpace being the 800 pound gorilla in the room. However, when you look at the Compete graph below you can see that MySpace’s traffic has been steadily falling for the past 11 months. MySpace’s year over year traffic has actually fallen 27%, while Facebook, which has roughly half the traffic of MySpace had seen its year over year traffic rise 36%. Yes, that is not the astronomical growth we have seen in the past from Facebook, but when you take into account they are driving hundred’s of millions of monthly visits - 37% is a very impressive number.
So the question becomes where is the growth within the Social Networking world? See that blue line above, that is the professional Social Networking website Linkedin. When compared next to Facebook and MySpace, LinkedIn barely registers. With just over 20 million visits a month, LinkedIn is not going to be confused with the big boys anytime soon, however their growth is nothing less then spectacular. Year over year growth for LinkedIn is around 750%. That is huge, especially considering LinkedIn is not a new website, it has been around since 2004. Even better than that growth is the fact that even this niche Social Network numbers are far better then other Social Networking destinations making headlines. Bebo, which AOL bought for $850 million, has just over 13 million monthly visits and has seen a loss in year over year traffic of 47%. Why did AOL buy Bebo again? Oh yeah out of desperation.
As you can see from the below chart growth for the other “big names” in Social Networking is heading in the wrong direction. Hi5 which has about 10 million monthly visits saw a 6% decline in yearly traffic while Orkut, which is owned by Google, has only 10 million monthly visits and is heading in the wrong direction with a 10% decline - hey like my friend at Google once told me: “Orkut is huge in Brazil”!
So what is the future of Social Networking? People have been trying to predict this since the word Social Networking was created. Many people believe that “niche” Social Networks will see the next great growth explosion. Some believe that web services like Ning.com, where you can create your own Social Network, will be the next big thing. The one thing that is for certain is that there is room for more then one player in the field, not everyone wants to use Facebook or MySpace, plus as we saw with Friendster - nothing is for certain online.
- Social Networking World Map: It isn’t just Facebook and MySpace
- Targeted Social Networking Website LinkedIn.com Traffic Up 323% In Past Year
- Open Registration at FaceBook.com Leads to 89% Visitor Growth
- The Power of Social Networking and the Battle for Page Views
- MySpace Outperforms All Other Social Networking Sites
