Facebook Tops, But Social Networkers Fickle

Facebook Tops, But Social Networkers Fickle

Jack Loechner, Jul 03, 2009 11:00 AM

According to Nielsen, total minutes spent on social networking sites in the U.S has increased 83% year-over-year. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700% 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 for the month… and worth $10 billion last week according to analysts.

Jon Gibs, vice president, media and agency insights, Nielsen Online, notes “We have seen major growth in Facebook… and a subsequent decline in MySpace. Twitter… (is) perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space… regardless of how fast a site is growing… it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers… (who) are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform… at a moment’s notice.”

Gibs concludes, “… maybe the better question to ask is who does each site reach, not who is ‘winning’… and how are they building for the future to maintain the loyalty of their visitors, who to this point have shown little long-term loyalty to any specific platform.”

For more information, please visit Nielsen Online here.