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MySpace Owns 68% of SocNet Traffic, Facebook Visits Up 50%

MySpace.com received 67.54% of the market share of US visits in August 2008 among a custom category of 56 social-networking websites, while Facebook ranked second with 20.56%, followed by MyYearbook, which received 1.65%, according to Hitwise.

MyYearbook had the largest gain in market share in August 2008 among the top 5 visited websites; visits to the site increased 256% compared with August 2007 levels. Tagged and Facebook followed, with visits increasing 147% and 50%, respectively.

The market share of US visits to the category decreased 2% from the previous month, to 6.40% of all US visits. Visits to the category decreased 17% year-over-year.

Paid and Organic Social Networking Searches

The top search term driving paid clicks to social-networking websites in August was “classmates.com” with 0.03% of all search traffic. The paid clicks from Classmates-related terms in the top 30 accounted for 0.06% of all search traffic.

Organic clicks off of the term “myspace” drove 14.96% of all search traffic. Among the top 30 organic terms, organic clicks on MySpace-related terms accounted for 25.96% of all search traffic to the category.

Average Time Spent on Social Networks

The average time spent among all social networking websites in August was 19 minutes and 56 seconds, or an increase of 14% compared with August 2007.

Among the top 5 most visited social-networking websites, MySpace led; its users spent an average of 30 minutes and 32 seconds on the website.

Facebook underwent the largest growth in average time spent, increasing 23% in August to 19 minutes and 30 seconds, from 15 and 50 seconds in August 2007.