• September 26, 2008

MySpace.com received 67.54% of the market share of U.S. visits in August 2008 among a custom category of 56 of the leading social networking Web sites, according to Hitwise. But the market share of U.S. visits to the social networking custom category decreased 2% in August 2008 to 6.40% of all U.S. visits compared to July 2008. Visits to the category decreased 17% year-over-year.

Among the top 10 social networking Web sites, Facebook ranked second by market share of U.S. visits with 20.56%, followed by myYearbook, which received 1.65 %. MyYearbook experienced the largest gain in market share in August 2008 among the top five visited Web sites, increasing 256% compared to August 2007. Tagged and Facebook followed, increasing 147% and 50%, respectively.

The top search term driving paid clicks to social networking sites in August was "classmates.com," with .03% of all search traffic. The paid clicks from Classmates-related terms in the top 30 accounted for .06% of all search traffic. Organic clicks off of the term "myspace" drove 14.96% of all search traffic. Among the top 30 organic terms, organic clicks on MySpace-related terms accounted for 25.96% of all search traffic to the category.

The average time spent among all social networking Web sites in August 2008 was 19 minutes and 56 seconds, representing an increase of 14% compared to August 2007. Among the top five most visited social networking Web sites, MySpace led with users spending an average of 30 minutes and 32 seconds on the Web site. Facebook experienced the largest growth in average time spent, increasing 23% in August 2008 to 19 minutes and 30 seconds from 15 and 50 seconds in August 2007.--Tanya Irwin