Statistics of top social networking sites

For some research I had to do at "the triangle", I wrote up some stats and took some pictures of graphs for top networking sites.  I figured since I already did the work, I'd post them here too - for reference:

Social Networking Trends

According to Hitwise, the US market share of Internet traffic to the top 20 social networking sites grew by 11.5 percent from January to February 2007, to account for 6.5 percent of all Internet traffic in February 2007. Perhaps unsurprisingly, MySpace is still the heavyweight in a market made up of featherweights, with an 80% share. Facebook is MySpace's closest challenger with 10% of the market.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=114

Wired talks about social networks for students:

http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/08/student_networks

61% of 13-to 17-year-olds have a personal profile on sites such as MySpace, Friendster, or Xanga.

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children – link from story: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=10900

Myspace Traffic from Alexa:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/myspace.com

Percent of global Internet users who visit this site

Facebook Traffic from Alexa:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/facebook.com

Percent of global Internet users who visit this site

VS:

Google searches even:

Different sources:

Top 10 Most Popular Websites in the US

Posted by Andrew on September 30th, 2007
Visited 4005 times, 27 so far today

Got curious about how the different traffic rating services ranked the top 10 websites in the United States last month.

Here’s what I found:

Alexa:
1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. Myspace
4. Youtube
5. Facebook
6. MSN
7. Ebay
8. Windows Live
9. Wikipedia
10. Craigslist

Quantcast:
1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. AOL
4. MSN
5. Myspace
6. Ebay
7. Mapquest
8. Microsoft
9. Windows Live
10. Amazon

Nielsen NetRatings:
1. Google
2. Yahoo!
3. Microsoft
4. MSN/Windows Live
5. AOL
6. Fox Interactive Media (Myspace, Photobucket)
7. Ebay
8. Youtube
9. Wikipedia
10. Amazon

comScore:
1. Yahoo! Sites (Geocities, Mybloglog, Flickr)
2. Google Sites (Youtube, Blogger)
3. Time Warner Network (CNN, AOL, Mapquest)
4. Microsoft Sites (MSN, Live)
5. Fox Interactive Media (Myspace, Photobucket)
6. Ebay
7. Amazon
8. Ask
9. Wikipedia
10. Viacom Digital (MTV, CBS, Nickelodeon)

Avenues:

• Events
  • Event listing and invites
• Groups
  • Group options – those who do this, those who do that. 
  • Raises awareness
• Characters
  • Age groups
    • Young group – cartoons or cool characters (see age charts?)
    • Middle school/HS – content with positive message or free giveaways
    • College + - get involved with volunteering, etc.