Mike Andrew Consulting

Facebook Monthly Visitors More than Double MySpace, Twitter Combined

By mike, Aug 10 in blog with 0 comments

As of May 2011, the number of unique US visitors to Facebook.com was roughly 2.5 times the combined number of unique visitors to MySpace and Twitter.com, according to a July 2011 white paper from comScore. Data from “The Power of Like” indicates in May 2011, Facebook had almost 160 million unique US visitors, while MySpace has a little less than 40 million and Twitter had a little more than 20 million.

Facebook, Twitter Show Dramatic 4-Year Growth

In June 2007, Facebook recorded a little more than 20 million unique US visitors, meaning that total has increased roughly eight times in the past four years. With virtually no unique visitors in June 2007 (it initially launched in March 2006), Twitter’s growth is hard to even put a number on.

In contrast, MySpace received roughly 70 million unique visitors in June 2007, meaning it has lost more than 40% of that total in the past four years.

Facebook Homepage Draws Most Interest

Within Facebook, the largest portion of users’ time is spent on the individual’s homepage which features the newsfeed. In May 2011, 27% of engagement on Facebook.com occurred on the homepage and nwsfeed, followed by profile viewing (21%), photo viewing (17%) and usage of apps and tools (10%) The remaining 25% of user time is spent on all other areas of the site.

Friends of Fans Offer Branding Opportunity

Reaching fans with marketing messages is certainly of interest to brands, but comScore research has found that the Facebook friends of fans represent a substantial potential audience, often well beyond the scale of fans alone.

A Facebook analysis of the top 100 brand pages suggests that for every fan, there are an additional 34 friends of fans that can be reached (with significant variance among brands). This multiplier grows even larger as we look beyond the top 100 brand pages (81x on average among the top 1,000 fan pages).

Branded Content Reach Grows Exponentially

Facebook analysis suggests that each incremental day of publishing branded content from the Facebook Page increases the reach among Fans by approximately 2.5%. Thus, a piece of branded Facebook content which averages about 7-8% reach on the first day of publication exceeds 20% reach by the seventh day it is published.

IgnitionOne: Facebook Ad Spend Grows

Spending on and impressions of Facebook ads both grew dramatically between Q2 2010 and Q2 2011, according to data from IgnitionOne. Results of the Q2 2011 US Online Advertising Report show that Facebook ad spend on all clients increased 281% year-over-year in Q2, while Facebook ad impressions of all clients grew 200%. IgnitionOne analysis indicates Facebook advertising has experienced high rates of growth due to new marketer adoption in the past year.

About the Data: Data in this paper was collected and analyzed using the comScore Social EssentialsTM product, which is a measurement service based on comScore’s proprietary 2 million person global panel of Internet users from a home or work computer (note: mobile-based Internet browsing is not included in this analysis). Opt-in panelists provide comScore with explicit permission to passively observe their online behavior, including site visitation, search activity, advertising exposure, and online purchases

About the author

Mike Andrew has been working with the Internet and small business for over 12 years. Mike has been a keynote speaker at conventions and seminars and conducted social media training sessions all over the world. Mike has an extensive media background having worked in electronic media for over 30 years. Mike specialises in social media and Internet marketing strategy, SEO techniques and search engine marketing campaigns. His articles appear on numerous blogs around the web as well as national magazines.