Facebook is "supposed to be on a rocket ride", right? Well, according to Hitwise data, the social networking darling has a 16 percent market share in the U.S., compared to a whopping 72 percent for
MySpace. But the Hitwise data "confusing" because the firm fails to qualify "market share." Do they mean total page views or unique visitors?
Schonfeld turns to comScore to get a
more complete picture. The rival measurement firm concurs that Facebook lags behind the News Corp. giant--but by less than Hitwise says--with 35 million U.S. uniques compared to 69 million for
MySpace. However, the Hitwise data probably refers to the number of page views as a percent of total U.S. Internet traffic (Hitwise's standard measurement criteria). ComScore says that Facebook had
one third as many total page views, with 13 billion in December 2007 compared to 38 billion for MySpace.
Worldwide, Facebook has nearly caught up with MySpace, according to comScore,
with 93 million unique visitors versus 105 million for MySpace. It's the same story with page views: 42 billion for Facebook versus 48 billion for MySpace. However, in total time spent on the site,
Facebook is the new king, with 21 billion minutes versus 17.
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