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Facebook Visits Up 50 Percent Year over Year

MySpace top social networking site with 67 percent market share;
Classmates.com top paid industry search term in August

NEW YORK, NY - September 25, 2008 - MySpace.com received 67.54 percent of the market share of U.S. visits in August 2008 among a custom category of 56 of the leading social networking websites according to Hitwise. The market share of U.S. visits to the social networking custom category decreased 2 percent in August 2008 to 6.40 percent of all U.S. visits compared to July 2008. Visits to the category decreased 17 percent year-over-year.

Top 5 Social Networking Websites Ranked by Market Share of U.S. Internet Visits

Rank

Name

Domain

Aug-08

Jul-08

Aug-07

YoY % Change

1

MySpace

www.myspace.com

67.54%

68.23%

75.04%

-10%

2

Facebook

www.facebook.com

20.56%

19.48%

13.68%

50%

3

myYearbook

www.myyearbook.com

1.65%

1.58%

0.46%

256%

4

Tagged

www.tagged.com

1.53%

1.35%

0.62%

147%

5

Bebo

www.bebo.com

0.94%

1.13%

1.38%

-32%


Note - data is based on a custom category of 56 of the leading social networking websites ranked by market share of
U.S. visits, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context.

Source: Hitwise

 

Among the top 10 social networking websites, Facebook ranked second by market share of U.S. visits with 20.56 percent, followed by myYearbook, which received 1.65 percent. MyYearbook experienced the largest gain in market share in August 2008 among the top five visited websites, increasing 256 percent compared to August 2007. Tagged and Facebook followed, increasing 147 and 50 percent, respectively.


Top Paid and Organic Traffic to Social Networking

In August 2008, the top search term driving paid clicks to Social Networking websites was 'classmates.com' with .03 percent of all search traffic. The paid clicks from Classmates-related terms in the top 30 accounted for .06 percent of all search traffic. Organic clicks off of the term 'myspace' drove 14.96 percent of all search traffic. Among the top 30 organic terms, organic clicks on MySpace-related terms accounted for 25.96 percent of all search traffic to the category.

Top 5 Paid and Organic Search Terms among Social Networks

Rank

Paid Terms

Clicks

Organic Terms

Clicks

1

classmates.com

0.03%

myspace

14.96%

2

classmates

0.03%

myspace.com

5.59%

3

myspace

0.01%

facebook

3.72%

4

people search

0.01%

www.myspace.com

2.30%

5

reunion.com

0.01%

my space

1.75%


Note - data is based on the percentage of paid and organic clicks generated by all search terms within a custom category of 56 Social Networking websites for a four-week period ending
Aug. 30, 2008 based off of the Hitwise sample of U.S. Internet users.

Source: Hitwise

MySpace Tops among Average Time Spent

In August 2008, the average time spent among all social networking websites was 19 minutes and 56 seconds, representing an increase of 14 percent compared to August 2007. Among the top five most visited social networking websites, MySpace led with users spending an average of 30 minutes and 32 seconds on the website. Facebook experienced the largest growth in average time spent, increasing 23 percent in August 2008 to 19 minutes and 30 seconds from 15 and 50 seconds in August 2007.

Average U.S. Time Spent for August 2008 (in minutes & seconds)

Rank

Name

Domain

Aug-08

Aug-07

YoY % Change

1

MySpace

www.myspace.com

30m32s

30m52s

1%

2

Facebook

www.facebook.com

19m30s

15m50s

23%

3

MyYearbook

www.myyearbook.com

28m57s

26m22s

10%

4

Tagged

www.tagged.com

24m03s

26m06s

-8%

5

Bebo

www.bebo.com

26m04s

29m34s

-12%


Note - data is based on the average
U.S. time spent from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context.

Source: Hitwise

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

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