• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, July 3, 2009

According to Nielsen, total minutes spent on  social networking sites in the U.S has increased 83% year-over-year. In fact, total  minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700% year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making  it the No. 1 social networking site for the month... and worth $10 billion last week according to analysts.

Jon Gibs, vice  president, media and agency insights, Nielsen Online, notes  "We have seen major growth in Facebook... and a subsequent  decline in MySpace.  Twitter... (is) perhaps  changing the outlook for the entire space... regardless of how fast a site is growing... it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers... (who) are willing to pick up their networks  and move them to another platform... at a moment's notice."

Top 10 Social Networking and Blog Sites (April 2009 U.S. Home and Work)
Site	Apr-08 Total Minutes (000)	Apr-09 Total Minutes (000)	Year-over-Year Percent Growth
Facebook	1,735,698	13,872,640	699%
Myspace.com	7,254,645	4,973,919	-31
Blogger	448,710	582,683	30
Tagged.com	29,858	327,871	998
Twitter.com	7,865	299,836	3712
MyYearbook	131,105	268,565	105
LiveJournal	54,671	204,121	273
LinkedIn	119,636	202,407	69
SlashKey	N/A	187,687	N/A
Gaia Online	173,115	143,909	-17
Source: Nielsen NetView

April was the fourth month in a row that Facebook held the top  spot in both unique visitors and total minutes, but Myspace has been winning in online video with 120.8 million video streams.

Myspace visitors spent 384 million minutes viewing video on the  site, with an average of 38.8 minutes per viewer.  In comparison, Facebook visitors  spent only 113.5 million minutes viewing video in April, with an average of 11.2  minutes per video viewer.

Top 5 Social Networking and Blog Sites Ranked (April  2009, U.S. Home and Work)
Site	Total  Video Streams (000)	Time Spent Viewing (Minutes x 000)
Myspace.com	120,793	384,030
Facebook	41,537	113,502
Stickam	19,617	54,522
FunniestStuff.net	10,206	34,456
Funny or Die	6,503	17,725
Source: Nielsen VideoCensus, June 2009

Gibs concludes, "... maybe the better question to ask is who does each site reach, not who is  'winning'... and how are they building for the  future to maintain the loyalty of their visitors, who to this point have shown  little long-term loyalty to any specific platform."

For more information, please visit Nielsen Online here.