NEWS

Friendster Growing Faster than Any Other Top Social Network!

CNET Asia
March 31, 2008
By Nicholas Aaron Khoo


In this Facebook-crazed "era", it's interesting to note that Friendster is still alive and well and growing faster than all the rest!

The latest comScore worldwide numbers were just released, and since I occasionally (and selectively) advise organisations on new media strategies, this geek managed to get hold of some inside industry news pertaining to the social-networking space, especially to Friendster which I wrote about earlier.

This month, Friendster seemed to have experienced some exciting growth in terms of numbers and there were also some interesting industry trends. So let's focus on Friendster for once.

1. Friendster is the 8th largest Web site on the planet and the 3rd largest social network on the planet in terms of traffic, according to the publicly traded Internet metrics company comScore (see table).

In the last two months, Friendster moved from 12th place to 8th place, passing:
• Tencent (operator of QQ.com in China)
• Cyworld (a social network in Korea)
• NHN Corporation (operator of Naver, the top Korean Web portal)
• Hi5 (a social network primarily used in central/south America and non-western Europe)

The "8th largest Web site in the world" translates into Friendster users viewing 16.1 billion pageviews in February, or the equivalent of over 14,000 person years.

2. Friendster is growing faster than any other top social network--both in absolute terms and percentage terms--whether you look at last month or the last three months. In February, for example, Friendster grew 9 percent or 3 million monthly unique visitors ("uniques").

In January, Friendster grew 15 percent or 4.4 million uniques. Over the last three months, Friendster grew a total of 8.7 million uniques, or 31 percent--more than any other social network. To put this in perspective, in the last three months alone, more than 1 percent of the world's entire Internet population started using Friendster (8.7 million incremental visitors in three months vs. 823 million global Internet users, per comScore).

It's also interesting to note:

• Neither Facebook nor MySpace experienced growth last month. MySpace lost 1 percent over the previous month (currently at 107.7 million unique visitors) and Facebook had 100.3 million monthly unique visitors, losing about 400,000 users.

• Bebo realized 2 percent growth last month, adding 500,000 monthly unique visitors, bringing its total to 22.9 million monthly unique users.

3. Friendster is the leader among top social networks in user engagement with an average of 206 minutes per visitor per month, the highest of these social networks (Bebo at 188 minutes, Facebook at 187 minutes, MySpace at 176 minutes, and Hi5 at 125 minutes, per comScore).

4. Friendster is now a Top 50 global Web site (47th to be exact) in monthly unique visitors, putting Friendster well ahead of social-networking site Bebo, media giant CBS, Internet staple Craigslist, and other well-known properties such as Wal-Mart, Dell, ESPN, and others.

So why is Friendster growing faster than other top social-networking destinations? Hmm, maybe this growth can be attributed to a number of new features and site enhancements designed to retain existing users and attract new ones--more notably Fan Profiles, Friendster's Developer Program, and Friendster's availability now in six languages other than English.

Or maybe the other leaders like Facebook and MySpace have reached their max and the only way for them is downwards?

Some food for thought as you doodle away in your own social-networking world!