Earlier this week, comScore presented its “2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review’.
When summarizing 2009’s social networking trends, comScore writes that social networking continued to gain momentum in 2009.
And it will not be different this year. Time for some details. As I wrote before comScore found that in December 2009 almost 4 out of 5 Internet users visited a social networking site.
Overall, social networking activity now accounts for 11% of all time spent online in the US, comScore says, adding that it’s “one of the most engaging activities across the Web”.
comScore looked at the three main players, or should I say the three players that get most of the attention now?
Of course they are Facebook (undisputable number one), MySpace and micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter. I doubt if next year others will join those three, although you never know of course (still use Second Life? Remember the buzz about it?).
I guess that visitors of this blog (and many others) know that both Facebook and Twitter did well in 2009 and that MySpace had to see its main competitor, Facebook, post triple-digit growth.
MySpace Music has grown 92% in 2009
Facebook took the lead in the social media space last May and had 112 million visitors in December, according to the comScore data.
Meanwhile, 2008 social media leader MySpace saw what comScore describes as ‘some softening in its audience’.
However, don’t underestimate MySpace: according to comScore the new strategic focus of MySpace on entertainment seems to be successful with MySpace Music having grown 92% in 2009.
And then there is the inevitable phenomenon called Twitter. Just like Facebook, Twitter has posted triple-digit growth.
Crazy little thing called Twitter
Twitter had almost 20 million visitors to its website in December, that’s ten times more than the year before.
Noteworthy is that Twitter jumped from 4 million visitors in February 2009 to 17 million in April.
You’ll probably know that Twitter’s growth has been softening but that according to several experts this is more a sign that Twitter is now a more ‘mature’ medium, especially when you look at the data I shared in this post.
Stay tuned for more because there are also demographic data to tackle, and most of all I want to talk later about what comScore sees as challenges for social media to become a part of the marketing strategy.
Join me in the Social Marketing Forum