US Web stats company Compete has some interesting analysis on how Social Networking sites compare to portals. From a sample size of around 2 million US people, Compete concludes that social networking sites are quickly approaching the traffic level of the big portals like Google and Yahoo. Their key findings:
1. In June, 2 out of every 3 people online visited a social networking site
2. Since January 2004, the number of people visiting or taking part in one of the top online social networks has grown by over 109%
3. Social networking sites are now close to eclipsing traffic to the giants - Google and Yahoo
They liken the growth of SNS to email in the 90's. A couple of charts from Compete:
Given my recent coverage of international markets, it'd be interesting to see how the likes of Bebo fits into this picture - as Bebo recently overtook MySpace as the top SNS in the UK. Compete's stats are US-only, but in any case it's clear that all trends point to SNS sites overtaking the Internet portals - sooner rather than later.
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I don't disagree with the premise, but that first chart is just terrible. Comparing the lump sum growth of 10 sites against two individual sites is just ridiculous.
Posted by: Andy Baio | August 11, 2006 6:21 PMYou have a good point there Andy. The aggregate measure does show the industry trend for SNS, however in all fairness it looks like Google has a similar growth pattern - and Y! is holding its own.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 11, 2006 7:37 PMWhile the charts may be flawed to some degree, to me the real importance is that SNS is growing so extraordinarily fast.
The overall SNS traffic isn't going to flatten any time soon. That is the real importance of the data.
Posted by: Gary Bourgeault (thealphamarketer.com) | August 11, 2006 11:29 PMI didn´t have the stats, but it could be that more often, the results that we get with the "regular search" using Google or Yahoo don´t achieve the user´s expectations. It may be possible that the "lack of relevant results" from the main portals force more people to look for a new ways of searching.
Posted by: paco_fery | August 12, 2006 12:38 AMAnother possible reason is that the social networking sites seems more dinamic, it is easy to find "fresh" news or information.
You guys are probably right that it is a ridiculous comparison, especially given the drastic differences between the audience demographics of myspace, tickle, and typepad, etc... But I do wonder whether there is something qualitatively significant about the recent rise in social networking traffic...
Posted by: maetl | August 14, 2006 1:00 AMWhen did the term Social Networks become so broad? Although Typepad/Blogger/LiveJournal (and YouTube) have social possibilites I would hardly lump them in the same category as MySpace or Facebook.
Posted by: adam | August 14, 2006 1:18 PMHi,
I agree with you, social networks are SNS successfully. But "show me the money" !
I was thinking about old "1.0" social networks a few days ago : wich service is always alive and independent ? All of this services were bought by big sites (tripod by yahoo for example) or... died.
When you look at 2.0 social networks, they're already bought : flickr + delicious by yahoo / myspace by murdoch / blogger is google. OK, youtube is still alone. But for how long ?
I think that a social network can't earn enough money. It needs to be integrated in an larger audience strategy by websites who can pay for social services.
Do you agree ?
I apologize for my english ;o)
Posted by: Cedric | August 15, 2006 4:37 AMIf you can read french I explain my point of view on my website.