UK: Google: pole position, Facebook: shooting star
News today that Google has managed to hold on to its top spot yet again in the rankings for most visited web property in the UK, bringing in some 28m visitors to its web sites in May 07, according to figures from comScore. Microsoft and eBay were ranked second and third, with 27.4m and 22.2m respective visitors to their sites. Yahoo was in fourth place with an estimated 20.6m visitors.
Interesting to note that Facebook had the biggest growth in traffic of all sites. Between April and May of this year, traffic on the social network went up by 30%, and comScore says Facebook's traffic has gone up by 2,123% over the last year. Despite this, with visitor numbers totalling 4.8m for the month of May, Facebook still doesn't make the top-20 rankings for the UK.
Part of the explosive growth surely must be down to the company having recently opened the site to new members--in the past it was restricted to people with college/university email addresses. That makes me wonder whether its growth will be sustainable in the longer term.
The way Facebook allows users to invite the entirety of their email address books in one click has definitely been used a lot lately. I'm not a high-volume Internet community type myself, but even I have had loads emails saying I've been added as a Facebook friend to other people's pages. (Each invite requires me to click in and approve the friendship, meaning more traffic for Facebook.)
When Google bought YouTube in 2006, there was a lot of speculation over whether Yahoo or a big media player would buy up Facebook. Founder Mark Zuckerberg has said he doesn't want to sell, but if this momentum keeps up beyond the 'signing up' stage, I won't be at all surprised if this actually happens.
Labels: comScore, Facebook, Google, social networking, United Kingdom, web traffic
posted by ingrid @ 11:03 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Don't you think a site like facebook, as with myspace and its predecessors, bebo, hi5 etc are all just fad websites where the user will eventually move on to use the next new social media site? From a personal perspective, i have moved copious amounts of times between sites. i hear the next big thing is 'LinkedIn'. Maybe, its just a personal thing, but I do get the feeling that each of these sites ride thier own crest for as long as possible and in that time should they sell to a bigger media company, it would be regarded as a good bit of business. Again, personally, I feel those sites which retain their simplicity, such as google, will always retain their users. Just a thought, I guess.
Hi Mabs. Thanks for your comment. I pretty much completely agree with you--hence my wonder if Facebook will be able to sustain traffic in the longer term beyond people getting spammed to become friends and sign up to the service.
Over the last couple of years, MySpace has only grown in size rather than declined. That says to me that it is possible to be more than a flash in the pan (to extend the metaphor, you can be, at the least, a sautee if not a slow braise).
I reckon sustainability will depend on what kind of services and content hooks these sites develop on top of basic 'networking.' Among other things, MySpace has become a major site for the music industry, particularly alternative/indy music. It will also start doing quite a lot more with video content from big brands and others (the News Corp. connection will come in handy here).
Facebook's trying to open itself to more hooks by allowing users (and significantly big organisations/companies) to create user communities around their particular products/interests/etc. We'll see if this works to increase usage.
LinkedIn has been around for ages (again relatively speaking). So far it's been a slow burner I think.
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