We all know this person: constantly showing up in your Facebook news feed with status updates, added friends and wall comments. The “stickiness” of most social sites is unrivaled by any other type of site, a point that the behavior of hardcore members really drive home. These “Social Addicts” check their beloved site constantly and have helped encourage similar behavior from other users.

Knowing how different Facebook and MySpace are in terms of design, functionality and usage, how much do “addicts” of these social networks differ? You may have read some of our posts on BehaviorMatch before, but this analysis essentially highlights the online behavior that is specific to a particular group of users. This analysis is designed to help with media buying, but in the case of social networks it can also help define the psychographic makeup of the group, and how “addicts” generally use their favorite social site.

The table below shows the sites that MySpace and Facebook Addicts* visited substantially more than the average internet user. So what do these users do when they aren’t getting their social network fix?

• To be fair, the MySpace list is filtered. An untouched list of the top twenty most popular websites among MySpace addicts would consist entirely of sites focused on modifying personal profile pages.
• After scrubbing out a majority of the sites focused on MySpace layouts, it seems that the hardcore users of this MySpace are still primarily teens, as sites focused on proms (meprom.com), shoes (kicksaholic.com), and Alternative music (warpedtour.com) bubble to the top of the list.
• It’s no surprise that hardcore Facebook users have a high affinity to some sites supporting Facebook applications, but the applications they interact with the most is telling of their online interests. It appears gaming (socialgn.com), dating (sexappealhq.com), music (garageband.com), and interacting with friends (quizapps.com) are all a core online activity to Facebook addicts.

MySpace and Facebook are two well established sites with massive audiences. Twitter, on the other hand, is a much smaller, growing site devoted to communication. In some ways it could be seen as the direction the social web is heading…and it’s also highly addicting. So what do the sites that Twitter addicts visit say about the future of the web, and how does this compare to the two more traditional social web players?

Comparing the three, some really compelling trends are visible. While it’s not shocking that sites like twhirl.org (a site that offers “tweet” enabling software) rise to the top of the list, some of the others show that these users are most interested in socializing.

• MySpace addicts are somewhat vain – focusing heavily on establishing and fine tuning their online personas by customization of their personal profiles
• Facebook addicts focus more on engagement – interacting with applications, music and people both on and off the platform
• Twitter addicts are most interested in fostering communication and exploration – sites that allow a user to understand what their contacts are doing, provide a platform for content discovery and encourage users to actively participate are the most likely places to find hardcore twitterers.

* In this analysis Facebook and MySpace addicts were defined as any user who logged into either site at least 21 days in February. Twitter addicts were defined as anyone who went to their twitter home page at least 10 times in a month. The less stringent qualifications for Twitter addicts was necessary because of the multiple channels used to access the site (mobile, desktop applications).

Earlier this week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg made Forbes list of the World’s Richest Men. Facebook certainly had more ups than downs in 2007, but can the site continue its rapid growth into 2008? Where’s MySpace and what else is going in the social web? It appears that the real movers in and shakers in 2008 weren’t moving much in early 2007.

For the big players in the space, February represented a slight decrease in traffic, but the year- over-year growth rates seem to indicate that social networking (as an industry) has yet to peak. The table below shows the top social networks in February 2008, ranked by monthly visits. This ranking factors in both total audience size, and also intensity of use.

UPDATED - 3/13

• Myspace was down slightly from February 2007 in terms of total US visits. However, the networking giant still holds a commanding traffic lead over all other Social sites.
• Facebook visits fell slightly from January 2008 to February 2008, but over the year the site has grown by over 75%. In terms of US visitors, it is now about one half the size of Myspace, but receives about 1/3rd as many visits.
• Niche markets are still attractive in terms of Social networking: Cafemom (a social network geared towards mothers), Linkedin (a networking site for professionals) and Fubar (“the first online bar”) all grew by 5X or more from February 2007 through February 2008. Fubar, in fact, exploded into the top 20 networks from relative obscurity one year ago.
• Innovative business models also had success in 2007: Communication platform Twitter, and white label social network Ning, both found a dramatically larger audience in the past year.

While fairly flat trend lines in MySpace traffic may provide an indication of the market reaching its peak, the rapid growth of some very new players in the space speaks to the opportunities in social networking that still exist… but only time will tell if Zuckerburg makes Forbe’s list next year.

Update: At the request of several of our readers, we’ve updated the table to include several prominent social networks that were left off the original post:

• imeem.com
• livejournal.com
• 360.yahoo.com

With the massive amount of search activity taking place across the web, the highest traffic search terms can provide a glimpse into the issues currently important to internet users, and consumers as a whole. With our online search tools, you can start to get at this data on a site level, but what we find even more interesting is how this plays out for the web as a whole, and how these terms change over time.

Taking a look at the most popular search terms from December 2007 through the better half of February 2008, some interesting trends develop. For this analysis we stripped out all branded, navigational and adult terms, to get at the meaty center of search behavior. The chart below shows the most popular search terms for January 2008, ranked by search referrals. The spark charts to the right of each term represent how referral volume has changed over time. We used referrals (as opposed to queries) in order to strip out terms that don’t result in fulfilled searches.

• Pop culture related spikes: Heath Ledger’s tragic death caused an explosion in searches on his name in January, resulting in nearly 2 million referrals from this term. Because of the timing of his untimely passing, some of this traffic spilled over into February. Search referrals from “Britney Spears” show a similar story.
• Seasonal trends: With tax season upon us, and students renewing their financial aid, search referrals from government terms “IRS” and “FAFSA” grew dramatically in January and then stabilize in February.
• Political Momentum: Just as Barack Obama’s campaign has gained increasing momentum, more online consumers are searching on his name. There was a dramatic increase from December to January (last month searches for his name drove over 500,000 referrals), and it appears that this term will nearly double again in February. Search volume for “Hillary Clinton” and “John McCain” grew substantially in the same time period, but with considerably less traffic.
• Technically branded, but too cool to leave out: Trailers and advertising for Cloverfield avoided showing the movie’s underlying monster. This ambiguity encouraged over 900,000 referrals for the term “Cloverfield.” The term “cloverfield monster” just barely missed making the top twenty-five list as well.

All terms listed above are exact match terms. For instance, for the term “dictionary” searches for a term like “online dictionary” would not be counted.

The big news of the day is Microsoft’s $45 billion dollar bid for Yahoo. While the blogosphere will be abuzz with predictions of how this will shake up the online landscape, there’s a very real impact on pure “traffic ownership.” We took a really brief look at what the potential merger means for Microsoft in terms of net new traffic, and how this will impact the big players in the space.

Microsoft currently owns three of the top ten most trafficked domains (as ranked by UVs). Yahoo.com currently ranks first across the entire web on this metric. What’s interesting is that, because of both Yahoo and Microsoft’s massive audiences, the overall pool of Unique Visitors grows by a surprisingly small amount. Looking at the chart below, Microsoft Properties* and Yahoo.com share 96 Million Visitors. In fact, the net new traffic, in terms of US Unique Visitors, only grows by 31% (37 million people). To throw the transaction value into the mix, that translates to $1,186 for each net new visitor.

But Unique Visitors are only one component of traffic measurement. In terms of total page views and Attention, a Yahoo acquisition would nearly double Microsoft’s numbers. The chart below shows the net new Unique Visitors, Pageviews and Attention that would result from the potential merger.

How would this potential merger shake up the overall internet landscape? Two-fold.

• Microsoft would dominate the web in terms of display ads. In addition to the billions of page views on various Microsoft domains, their ad network will grow exponentially.
• Microsoft would become a much bigger competitor in the search market.
  The chart below shows how the combined search, and site traffic will reshape the top performers on the net.

Google would still take the lions share of online search traffic but the combination of Yahoo and MSN/Live would grab about 25% of all search market share. However, the size of these two online giants would simply dominate any domain level traffic ranking, no matter how you slice the data. In terms of page views, the merged company would get over double the page views of second ranked MySpace.

There are many, many implications of a merger between Yahoo and Microsoft. As we dig deeper into this exciting development, we’ll be sure to keep you posted.

*In this analysis, Compete did not consider Yahoo Inc’s offsite traffic (at sites such as flickr or del.icio.us) and considered Microsoft traffic on Microsoft.com, MSN.com and Live.com

At Compete we frequently write about monthly traffic volume and site popularity, but the focus is usually on the ten or twenty sites that enjoy monthly visitors in the tens (or even hundreds) of millions. While it’s important to investigate these sites, massively popular domains like Google or Yahoo typically don’t change much in terms of domain-level traffic or rank. Right behind these behemoths, however, a large number of websites battle for the finite resource of consumer attention and the shifting dynamics of this group will ultimately define the future of the web.

With 2008 now more than two weeks old, it’s a great time to look back at last year and see how the web has changed. What sites experienced a surge of traffic in 2007? Has anyone fallen off the map? We compared the top 1000 sites in December 2007 with those in December of the previous year to find out.

The chart above shows the top twenty sites that gained or lost the most amount of traffic from December 2006 to December 2007, as a percentage of visits in December 2006. A few interesting trends are revealed:

• The web has yet to reach its “Social Peak”: Among the fastest growing sites, eighteen of the twenty offer a prominent peer-to-peer communication platform. Even in the adult video category, sites that function almost identically to YouTube (redtube.com and youporn.com) represent the fastest growing niche.
• Online daters would much rather be subjected to ads than a checkout form: Two of the fastest growing sites (Iamfreetonight.com and datehookup.com with 31000% and 3050% growth respectively) are relatively new entrants to an already crowded online personals market. Both services succeed by offering free membership and generating revenue through advertising, a business model they share with only a handful of other services.
• New Social Networks still have a chance…as long as they find their niche: CaféMom appeals to a very specific group, and has captured a substantial audience (and grown over 2000% in one year) despite the constant buzz surrounding Facebook last year.
• People place a high value on peer opinion: Both Stumbleupon and Reddit both grew by over 500% in 2007. Digg.com (not listed) also grew by nearly 300% in terms of visits in 2007.

One of the best perks of working at Compete is the ability to analyze website traffic down to page level detail for any domain — measuring visitor conversion, discovering a website’s referral sources, and getting traffic figures for millions of sites without being restricted to analyzing five domains at a time through Site Analytics.

Today, we’re pleased to make available Compete Top Lists. This new product provides ranking lists for up to 500,000 domains on the basis of any metric available on Compete.com:

• Unique Visitors
• Total Visits
• Pageviews
• Time Spent On Site
• Monthly Attention

Whether you’re a site owner wondering where you fall in the context of your peers, a domain buyer looking for the next great undervalued site, a venture capitalist looking for the next big as-yet discovered hit, or a stat-head interested in analyzing the web on a macro level, Compete Top Lists offers a new level of insight into the ever changing web.

Interested? Contact membersupport@compete.com or follow the link below for more information.