Is Social Media Traffic Transitory?
The Times today had an interesting article about the ‘promiscuity’ of many members of social networking sites and raised doubts over surging valuations. A pretty racy title, but the premise is that users are not sticking on one social networking site, instead they are “playing the field” and actively using several sites at once.
A survey by Parks Associates, indicated that “Half of users regularly use more than one site, most of which are free. One in six actively uses three or more.” In fact a recent Nielsen//NetRatings report showed that 444,000 Britons visited MySpace, Facebook and Bebo in May.
The Nielsen//NetRatings report showed that MySpace, the market leader in the UK has been losing users in Britain.
The number of British visitors to MySpace dipped to 6.5 million in May, from 6.8 million in April. The fall, which comes as Facebook, its rival, experiences a huge surge in visitors, was the first to hit MySpace since it signed a deal with Google last summer, under which the social network stands to reap about $900 million in advertising revenues. It was only the second dip since News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million two years ago.
MySpace has achieved the traffic targets underpinning its deal with Google with ease, but, according to Nielsen, over the past six months Facebook’s audience in the UK has grown at 19 times the rate of MySpace’s, surging 523 per cent to 3.2 million.
Alex Burmaster, a Nielsen analyst, said: “MySpace is, by far, still the most popular social network. However, if last month’s growth rates were to remain consistent . . . Facebook would catch MySpace in September.”
MySpace’s traffic numbers are not just being affected in the UK. The pattern was repeated in the United States, MySpace’s largest market, where traffic to the site fell to 56.6 million in May, from 57 million a month earlier according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
UK Social Media User Data (source: Nielsen//NetRatings)
- MySpace 6.5 million UK users, up 28 per cent in six months. Average time spent on site by user in a month: 96 minutes
- Bebo 4 million UK users, up 49 per cent in six months. Average time by user in a month: 152 minutes
- Facebook 3.2 million UK users, up 523 per cent in six months. Average time by user in a month: 143 minutes
What does this mean to marketers? With the transitory nature of social network users, advertisers who are only focusing on one of the social networks are missing a large marketing opportunity to have frequent “touches” and interactions with their clients and prospective clients. Read how Kris Jones and James Connell are using to different social networks to distinguish them in the marketplace.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Jul 3rd, 2007
