Social Networks gaining on Top Portals
Written by Jay Meattle (contact - e-mail) -- August 11th, 2006 |
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Membership at social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace is exploding. Everyone is doing it. Well… a lot of people are. In June, 2 out of every 3 people online visited a social networking site.
Since January 2004, the number of people visiting or taking part in one of the top online social networks has grown by over 109% (primarily driven by MySpace). Most of this growth has come about in the past 12 months alone! Social networking sites are now close to eclipsing traffic to the giants - Google and Yahoo.
For a clearer picture, take a look at the charts below:
Bottom-line:
More and more people are and will discover online social networking over time, much like we discovered email back in the 90’s. Explosive usage growth of the social networking sites mentioned in this post is a clear indicator that this is already happening. Will social network usage surpass that of Yahoo and Google? If I were a betting man, I would put my money on it.
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August 11th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
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August 16th, 2006 at 10:54 am
I think with the advent of social network sites, you’ll see a lot of websites find ways to service existing social networks. One example I’ve seen is the Cyborg Log, or Glogging, community:
http://glogger.eyetap.org
This lets people live broadcast cameraphone pics to all of their social networking sites (myspace, hi5, blogger, xanga,). All the user has to do is set up an account, register their glogging device (a cameraphone), and set up their glog to broadcast to all their sites by copying the html code that glogger generates into any of their sites.
August 16th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Whereas blogs do have social functionality, I don’t think they should be aggregated with data specifically about social networking sites. Same goes for media sharing sites like YouTube. Their functionality is not centered around socializing the way MySpace and Facebook are.
August 16th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Laura,
Thanks for writing in.
For this particular analysis we wanted to include sites where people create personal profiles with the opportunity to receive/initiate direct interaction and/or knowledge with peers. Under this definition YouTube qualifies as users can create a personal profile and receive direct feedback from other users. We also included blogging sites recognizing personal web properties as ‘personal profiles’ that provide the opportunity to solicit direct interaction from peers.
Pure social media sites, such as Digg and Wikipedia lack elements of the ‘personal profile’ that we were looking for.
I agree that the overlap can be a little blurry; however, you’ll find that historical analysis leveraged less clear definitions of Social Networking.
- Meattle
August 16th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Laura’s got a point. Would a BBS count as a social networking site then? They often allow for personal info pages to be updated as well, and have been around for a while.
I think the overall trend will be a plurality of social networks. One thing that Malcolm Gladwell and others have pointed out is that the internet encourages the establishment of multiple personas, one person could have both a myspace (associated with close friends) or LinkedIn (associated with business contacts) page, and those different personas could co-exist since they exist on different social networks. Perhaps in that way, portals like Google will do just find, because they are general purpose tools that are not really associated with any single social network.
The challenge google might have, is when social networks start to go into their space, search. Yahoo is already talking about social search engines, and of course we know about del.icio.us
August 16th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
For me the real importance of this data is that SNS is growing so extraordinarily fast and it doesnt look like it is going to flatten any time soon.
August 16th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
One need only go to an inner city library. Half of the computers will have users looking at MySpace. The other half will be doing actual research.
August 16th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
but again it’s important to emphasize that the growth is the growth of many different players rather than one. google is a massive entity, so is yahoo. what is myspace? a social network? yes it’s a very “sticky” phenomena, once you get on, you don’t get off. but what is myspace doing that will be special in the long run? there can easily be another social network that will usurp myspace. did you know cyworld from korea is coming to the US soon? half the population is on that thing. that’s the *real deal*… watch and see.
August 16th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Who know one day Yahoo/Google/Microsoft buy over one myspace.com for an example.
August 17th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Wow, nice statistics. Personally I have profile in MySpace, Hi5, LinkedIn and aSmallWorld. All of these communities brought nothing to my life except waste of time. Personally I think that people will get bored with communities and to keep the traffic growing they will have to find more and more option that bring members back to the site.
Personally I think the future is in the communities that are more personalized to certain groups of people and offer functions that cator to that group.
Social Networks are already making millions and can be sold for a good amount of money.
MySpace affiliated with Google and advertising google ads on its site.
YouTube was offered 600 million already.
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Yes.. Ive been to both Myspace & Facebook..
Even Using BLogger.Com..
My Say Social Networking is Driving Many As per its Vast Use for All Users As well SEO’s…
Nyways i Say Im Thankfull to These.. Networking & Bookmarking Sites…