Social Networking Sites Recover from September Decline, Facebook visits up 16%

Hitwise Intelligence - LeeAnn Prescott - US
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November 08, 2006
Social Networking Sites Recover from September Decline, Facebook visits up 16%
Today we released the HitwiseUS Consumer Generated Media Report, which examines trends in social networking, photo hosting and sharing, and online video. According to the report, the market share of visits to the top 20 social networking sites accounted for nearly 1 in 20 internet visits in September 2006 (4.9% of all Internet visits). That number remained the same in October 2006.
It has been reported that there was a decline in visits to sites likeMySpace andFacebook in September, which is a typical seasonal occurrence as school-aged users shift their attention from socializing online to academic pursuits. Last year, the market share of visits to the top 20 social networking sites decreased by 7.6% from August to September 2005, but recovered in October, increasing by 10.8% from September to October 2005. This year, a similar pattern emerged, with visits to the top 20 social networking sites decreasing by 7.3% from August to September 2006. Category traffic was flat from September to October 2006, indicating a slow down in growth, but by no means a decline.
The report shows how photo hosting sites likePhotobucket,Imageshack andSlide have grown in conjunction with social networking as they provide a service necessary to the creation of user content. Online video, as we all know, has exploded as well, and has been the most significant shift in consumer content creation and entertainment consumption in the past year.
To put all of this in perspective, below I've charted Facebook,YouTube, Photobucket, andWikipedia to show the significance of the seasonal trend. Notice the increase in visits to Wikipedia in May (during finals) and slight decline during the summer months. YouTube overtook Wikipedia in market share in August, but as soon as school started, Wikipedia's growth outpaced that of YouTube. Seethis post for more detail on the Wikipedia school year trend. Not only is entertainment consumption and social networking affected by the academic year, but so is photo hosting, a tool for social networking. Visits to Photobucket also declined in September, but recovered in October. As I've reportedbefore, Photobucket receives the majority of its upstream traffic from MySpace, making it privy to the same seasonal fluctuations in traffic.

The good news is that visits to some of the leading CGM websites are again on the rise. The market share of visits to Facebook were up 16.4% from September to October 2006, possibly due to its opening up of the site to non-school users. Visits to YouTube were up 7.8%,GaiaOnline andOrkut were each up 5%, Slide was up 13%, and Photobucket was up 3.1% in the same period.
Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 01:41 PM
Posted toCommunity