Brian Solis took the time last week to dig into some of the trends and the demographics at top social media sites. He was struck by the rapid growth at Facebook and Twitter over the past year, and wanted to get a better feel for what was characteristic of the users driving the changes in the market.
The change at MySpace was offset by strong, although deteriorating fundamentals in user engagement.
According to the report, U.S. visits to all social networks was up by 62 percent from September 2008 to 2009. Except of course, at Myspace and myYearbook. From 2008 to 2009 each experienced a significant erosion in visits by -55 percent and -40 percent respectively. The good news for MySpace however, is that the network topped the charts for average time spent in the network. And, as engagement is a key metric for social media, this data is critical to the future of MySpace engineering, innovation, and the ecosystem it creates moving forward. But, that engagement level is slipping, as it reflects a 12 percent loss of attention year-over-year.
This is a very interesting analysis that goes beyond the basic topline numbers we see reported each month. You can see the entire post here: http://www.briansolis.com/2009/10/the-great-social-divide-twitter-facebook-traffic-surges-myspace-fades/
