Top 20 Social Media Sites in 2008

Following on from yesterday's post on the rise of social media, another piece of research just released shows which sites have been visited the most. Comscore has released a list revealing the top Social Networks and Social Media sites in 2008. The graph above shows the total unique visitors for the top 5 sites from September 2007 to November 2008 (click to enlarge).

Although the list doesn't include figures from December, it does list the Total Unique Visitors as of November 2008:

1. Blogger - 221,503,000
2. Facebook - 200,189,000
3. MySpace - 126,168,000
4. Wordpress - 113,661,000
5. Windows Live Spaces - 86,760,000
6. Yahoo! Geocities - 69,159,000
7. Flickr - 63,866,000
8. Hi5 - 58,069,000
9. Orkut - 46,446,000
10. Six Apart Sites - 45,606,000
11. Baidu Space - 40,276,000
12. Friendster - 31,325,000
13. 56.com - 29,171,000
14. Webs.com - 24,230,000
15. Bebo - 24,149,000
16. Scribd - 23,524,000
17. Lycos Tripod - 23,350,000
18. Tagged.com - 22,300,000
19. Imeem - 21,889,000
20. Netlog.com - 21,1777,000

Blogger, Google's blogging platform, comes out on top. But Facebook is rising quickly and if the numbers continue will take the top spot and further stretch its lead over its closest social network competitor, Myspace, which comes in at third place.

Wordpress, a blogging platform that takes a more professional take then Blogger's 'push-button-and-publish' approach, comes in at a close fourth, demonstrating its rising popularity among bloggers.

Scribd, a social network for the sharing and discovery of documents, continues to grow and is likely to become more popular in 2009 as it becomes the premier destination for document sharing.

It's also interesting to note some of the lesser known sites - lesser known in the UK, anyway. For example, 56.com, one of the largest video sharing websites in China, and Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine, each have strong userbases which are only set to rise further as more of China comes online.

Surely it's only a matter of time before Twitter enters the Top 20? What sites do you predict to be in the Top 20 next year?

The Rise and Rise of Social Media in the UK

Over at the We Are Social blog, Robin Grant points towards research from Hitwise showing that 10.09% of all UK internet visits over the Christmas period were to ‘Social Networking and Forums’:

"The successes of Facebook and YouTube, along with similar sites, meant that social networks accounted for 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits during Christmas week. For the week ending 27/12/08, our Computers and Internet – Social Networking and Forums category accounted for 10.09% of all UK Internet visits, the first ever time it has passed the 10% threshold."

Robin Goad, Research Director at Hitwise UK

Here's the graph showing the rise in internet traffic to social networking sites over the past 12 months:

UK Social Media traffic Dec '07 - Dec '08

The trend also applies to Twitter:

UK Internet visits to Twitter Jul '07 - Jul '08

The post on We Are Social pulls out another quote from Robin Goad that highlights the key facts about the rise in visits to Twitter:

"UK Internet visits to Twitter have increased by 631% over the last 12 months, with 485% of that growth coming this year. Twitter is more popular with Brits than Americans: last week the site’s share of UK Internet visits was 70% higher its share of visits in America. Twitter cannot yet be considered mainstream in the USA, but in the UK it’s getting there."

It all makes for positive reading for those operating in the space and I'm sure it won't be long before Twitter becomes one a 'mainstream' social network, as many are predicting.

The full set of in-depth data is available in Hitwise’s UK Social Networking Update. Thanks goes to Robin Grant for flagging the research to me.

Mobile Monday - The Conversations Flows

Following on from last week's Mobile Monday, some interesting debate has come about - both in the comments of my write up on the event and in the group's mailing list.

Chris Morton questioned if the fact that “SMS in this country (UK) alone exceeds worldwide Google searches in same period of time” was really true.

In the true spirit of the group (one where a lot of useful conversations take place and where everyone freely shares their knowledge), Nick Gyles of WDS Technology answered quickly:

"The short answer seems to be no. Comscore’s latest figures (http://www.comscore.com/press/data.asp) have Google’s unique visitors at just over 6 billion per month – so search hits it way over that. I’m sure the average user must do in excess of 50 searches a month. The Mobile Data Association shows UK text messaging at 6.3 billion SMS for January ’08."

But then quickly followed up rectifying his mistake:

"Actually Google seems to be 600 million users, so it’s a bit closer.

Should have realised that 6 billion would actually be everyone on the planet ;-)"

James Pearce then pitched in, with a rather dry but witty response:

"3 computers, each with 2+ browsers, 2 VMs, 2 phones (one of which toggles to WiFi), 1 Wii, and a Google Maps mashup.

Um. At least 10 of these humans are me :-)"

Helen Keegan, the chair of the Mobile Monday event, then stamped her authiority on the debate, compelte with a humble acceptance of human error and a link to an article with stats to back up her arguemtn:

"The google search quote was from Mike Short (I checked with Robert Thurner) and he stated this at the SMS Birthday Party last December held by Airwide Solutions. So we can blame him if the maths doesn't add up! But actually, I think the maths probably does...
More stats from Mike Short here

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2202766/uk-sending-billion-texts-week"

Giles replied again:

"Search engine watch reports 2.7bn searches a month for Google in 2006. The Vnunet reports claim 2007 figures of 4.6bn SMS are 25% up on 2006, which would give 3.4bn SMS in the UK in 2006. So UK SMSers beat worldwide Googlers... at least back in 06.

For figures source see here: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156461"

So it seems that UK SMSers beat worldwide Googlers -at least back in 06.

But what have I learned from all of this debate - both at the actual Mobile Monday event, blogging about it afterwards, and the ensuing debate on the Mobile Monday Yahoo Group?

Well, apart from learning more about the future of mobile marketing, I've learnt that niche social networks with open, fair and intelligent debate are an incredibly useful tool for professionals - whatever industry they are in.

Luckily, the PR world has a few social networks specifically catered for our industry - PR Open Mic and The PR and Communications Network to name a couple.

The only problem is that not everyone knows how to use these tools or is sceptical of their usefulness. It's up to those who are confident in using those tools to teach those who aren't their worth. Users also need to meet up in the real world to network and discuss the various issues face to face - like the Mobile Monday events. Real world networking and debate is as improtant as the online version.

The Mobile Monday group is a perfect example of how a niche social network should be run, even with the fact that it is now a world wide brand. Here's hoping it continues the way it has done so far, that the debate and conversation continues, and that other niche social networks follow the group's example for their own benefit.