WatchMouse: Facebook is Worst-Performing Social Networking Site
- by Tameka Kee , January 11, 2008
Amsterdam-based WatchMouse determines a site's SPI by adding up the time it takes to load the main page (using an 8-second window) from one of 25 test stations worldwide. The longer the site takes to load, the higher the SPI. Properties are also penalized for errors like broken links and image-load failures. The final figure is expressed as an average over 1000 load attempts.
An SPI of 500 or lower is considered great performance, while anything over 1500 denotes a "seriously negative user experience." According to WatchMouse, Facebook had a slow load time and recorded more errors than any of the other monitored sites--a likely side effect of the site's immense popularity. The more users want to visit it, the better the chances are that the traffic onslaught will slow servers to a crawl.
WatchMouse monitors more than 100 sites for the SPI, including News Corp.'s MySpace, Google's Orkut, Windows Live Spaces and Twitter. Some of the top performers in terms of speed and availability were UK-based Faceparty, with an SPI of 303, and Orkut with a 564. MySpace scored a 923 and "loaded well and recorded few errors," but Twitter and Windows Live Spaces fared worse--with SPIs of 1476 and 1386, respectively.
