• by Tameka Kee , January 17, 2008

Although Facebook garnered the lion's share of media attention, News Corp.'s MySpace ruled the U.S. social networking space in terms of sheer volume in 2007, according to new stats from Hitwise.

MySpace received more than three-quarters of all the social networking traffic in the U.S. last year, managing to stay atop the heap of 53 social media sites despite pressures from several state Attorneys General for possibly harboring sex offenders, and the Facebook juggernaut. Not surprisingly, Facebook took the number two spot--snagging nearly 13% of all social net traffic, followed by Bebo with about 1%.

But in December 2007, traffic to MySpace was actually down by 8% from the previous year. In contrast, traffic to Facebook was up by some 51%, Disney's Club Penguin climbed by 48%, and MyYearbook shot up by more than 400% year-over-year. Traffic to all of the social nets measured was up by 4%.

Facebook took the lead in terms of increased user engagement, as members spent an average of about 20 minutes on the site in December--up 100% from the previous year. Engagement on MySpace remained relatively flat at about 30 minutes, but Bebo took a slight lead with an average time of 30:30 minutes, a gain of 4%. BlackPlanet also scored high engagement marks, with users spending an average of 25 minutes on the site--a 13% lift from 2006.