Twitter Grows Fastest, MySpace Still The Social King
October 23rd, 2008 Posted in Nielsen News, Online And Mobile | 23 Comments
Top social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn may be well-established, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped growing.
Nearly half of the biggest social networking sites are also among the fastest growing, according to data released Wednesday by Nielsen Online.
These top sites have also expanded beyond the youthful audience the social networking space initially captured — to find a place in older visitors’ professional lives. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reunion.com are most popular among visitors ages 25-34, 35-49, and 55-64, respectively, Nielsen reported.
| Rank (by Sept. YOY UA growth) |
10 Fastest Growing Social Networking Sites: Sept. 2008 |
Sept. 2007: Unique Audience (in 000s) |
Sept. 2008: Unique Audience (in 000s) |
% Growth: Year Over Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Twitter.com | 533* | 2,359 | 343% |
| 2 | Tagged.com | 898 | 3,857 | 330% |
| 3 | Ning | 842* | 2,955 | 251% |
| 4 | 4,075 | 11,924 | 193% | |
| 5 | Last.fm | 850 | 1,879 | 121% |
| 6 | 18,090 | 39,003 | 116% | |
| 7 | MyYearbook | 1,422 | 3,056 | 115% |
| 8 | Bebo | 1,299 | 2,418 | 86% |
| 9 | Multiply | 592 | 941 | 59% |
| 10 | Reunion.com | 4,845 | 7,601 | 57% |
| Source: The Nielsen Company, Custom Analysis (September 2008). | ||||
| *Note: These websites do not meet minimum sample size standards. Projected and average measures for these sites may exhibit large changes month-to-month, as a result. | ||||
| Rank (by UA) |
Top Social Networking Sites: Sept. 2008 |
Sept. 2007: Unique Audience (in 000s) |
Sept. 2008: Unique Audience (in 000s) |
% Growth: Year Over Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Myspace.com | 58,581 | 59,352 | 1% |
| 2 | 18,090 | 39,003 | 116% | |
| 3 | Classmates Online | 13,313 | 17,075 | 28% |
| 4 | 4,075 | 11,924 | 193% | |
| 5 | Windows Live Spaces | 10,275 | 9,117 | -11% |
| 6 | Reunion.com | 4,845 | 7,601 | 57% |
| 7 | Club Penguin | 3,769 | 4,224 | 12% |
| 8 | AOL Hometown | 7,685 | 3,909 | -49% |
| 9 | Tagged.com | 898 | 3,857 | 330% |
| 10 | AOL Community | 4,017 | 3,079 | -23% |
| Source: The Nielsen Company, Custom Analysis (September 2008). | ||||
View the full press release.
Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in Media Post, Wired, and PC Magazine.
Tags: AOL Community, AOL Hometown, Bebo, Classmates Online, Club Penguin, Facebook, fastest growing, largest audience, Last.fm, LinkedIn, most popular, Multiply, Myspace.com, MyYearbook, Ning, Reunion.com, September 2008, social networking, Tagged.com, top growth, Twitter.com, Website, Windows Live Spaces



October 23rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
[...] NielsenWire » Twitter Grows Fastest, MySpace Still The Social King Interesting. (tags: twitter myspace facebook social.networking nielsen metrics) [...]
October 29th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
[...] just came across Nielsen data showing twitter as the fastest growing social network sites in terms of audience. (but facebook is [...]
November 19th, 2008 at 11:03 am
[...] Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008 All Social Networks Overall growth, Unique Audience of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, LInkedIn, MySpace and beyond, Oct 23, 2008, Nielsen [...]
November 19th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
[...] consolidation of the blogosphere, substantial weakening of online retail, and competition from social networks, hasn’t slowed, and there is no reason why it should with a softening economy. (Searching is [...]
November 19th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
[...] a link to social network traffic reports by Nielsen Wire, courtesy of Jeremiah Owyang. These are all still growing like the emerging [...]
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:43 pm
[...] datos de la prestigiosa consultora Nielsen (a los que hemos llegado a través de Web Strategist), Twitter ha sido la red social de mayor [...]
November 24th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
[...] all have heard the buzz about twitter growing rapidly. Nielsen is reporting today the the year over year growth is at 343%. This makes twitter the fastest growing [...]
November 25th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
[...] Nielsen [...]
November 27th, 2008 at 6:02 am
[...] is the fastest-growing social community, according to the latest Nielsen statistics. The unique audience is reaching 2.4 million with visitors almost at 5.6 million, according to [...]
November 27th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
[...] Social Networks Overall growth, Unique Audience of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, LInkedIn, MySpace and beyond, Oct 23, 2008, Nielsen [...]
December 4th, 2008 at 9:14 am
[...] reported Twitter (a microblogging application to allows rapid sharing of information) has grown by more than 363% in the last 12 months. Stargazer Perennials reports that setting up blogs and an online store has [...]
December 6th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
[...] last night that people tend to stay on Facebook roughly half as long as MySpace, so although Myspace cannot compete with Facebook’s user growth once people are on there they stay for longer. To which she responded “that’s because [...]
December 7th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
[...] Nielsen’s September 2008 ranking of the ten largest and ten fastest-growing social media sites… [...]
December 9th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
[...] at Socialfish pointed me to some social networking stats that Nielsen posted recently. The two charts showcase growth of social media sites from September 2007 to September 2008. You [...]
December 9th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
[...] Full Story: blog.nielsen.com Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Facebook’s New Social Ads Turn Your Friends [...]
December 12th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
[...] adopters, Twitter is actually the fastest growing network, according to a recent report by Nielsen. As a result, this communication tool is receiving massive amount of press coverage – including [...]
December 15th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
[...] a baseball fan, reality is incomplete until it is quantified. That’s why reading Nielsen’s report of Twitter’s 2008 growth is fascinating, despite the fact that everyday we read about who [...]
December 19th, 2008 at 11:27 am
[...] to Nielsens blog, Twitter had the largest growth rate of the top social network sites in [...]
December 19th, 2008 at 11:30 am
It is interesting that you marked both Twitter and Ning with an asterik stating that these two sites do not meet the minimum sample size standards and their measures of these two can fluctuate greatly month to month. Was this list of the top 10 only based on one month, September, or multiple months?
December 19th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Hi Brian-
These charts were based on the top 10 social networking sites for Sept. 2008 only.
Hope this helps to clarify,
-Nielsen Wire
December 27th, 2008 at 5:21 am
[...] nielsen.com [...]
December 29th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
[...] Según datos de la prestigiosa consultora Nielsen (a los que hemos llegado a través de Web Strategist), Twitter ha sido la red social de mayor [...]
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:05 am
[...] blogs worldwide. And the world of micro-blogging is exploding, with Twitter usage up 343% in the past [...]