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Facebook, LinkedIn Biggest Social Network Movers

The latest social networking numbers don't jive with comScore's findings or the companies' own internal data, but nevertheless, October growth figures from Nielsen Online reaffirm what other traffic firms know: Facebook continues to outpace News Corp.'s MySpace in the growth department. Year-over-year, Facebook's October traffic surged 125 percent, from 8.6 to 19.5 million.

But that's still light-years away from MySpace's monster numbers: 58.8 million users for the month, up from 49.5 million a year earlier, representing 19 percent growth. Facebook added nearly 11 million users in October, only slightly more than MySpace, which added 9.3 million. You decide what's more important, a faster rate of growth or the actual numbers.

Other winners and losers on Nielsen's growth chart were Classmates.com, the sector's former No. 2, which actually lost 2 percent of its users over the last year, with 13.3 million, MSN's Windows Live Spaces, which added 2.4 million users to reach 10.3 million, AOL Hometown, which lost 1.4 million users, at 7.9 million, and finally, LinkedIn--surprisingly the sector's biggest mover--up a whopping 189 percent to 4.9 million. Last year at this time, the social network for professionals recorded just 1.7 million unique users. Disney's Club Penguin also receives an honorable mention for its 157 percent growth, which saw it move from 1.5 million to 3.9 million monthly uniques.

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