The Social Media Landscape

Interesting stats from MarketingCharts.com. (Click on the charts to make them BIGGER).

Top Social Media Sites: Twitter Leaps 1,989%

A June 2009 analysis of the top-10 social media properties by Nielsen reveals (pdf) that Twitter.com was again the fastest growing site for the month, increasing 1,928% year-over-year, from one million unique visitors in June 2008 to 21 million unique visitors in June 2009.

This increase, Nielsen said, puts Twitter at #4 on the list of most visited member communities in June:

By Nielsen’s calculations, Facebook continued to lead as the #1 social networking site for the sixth month in a row, with 87.3 million unique visitors in June 2009.

Data from Nielsen competitor comScore - which uses a different methodology to calculate unique visitors - put Facebook’s June unique visitor count at 77 million for June, the first month comScore said that Facebook overtook MySpace.

Facebook #1 for Time Spent

Nielsen also reported that Facebook also is the #1 social networking site in the top 10 when ranked by average time per person, with visitors spending an average of 4 hours and 33 minutes on the site in June. This is a 240% year-over-year increase.

Visitors typically spend a much smaller amount of time on Twitter, though the average time per person on that site increased 522% year-over-year, from 5 minutes and 2 seconds in June 2008 to 31 minutes and 17 seconds in June 2009, making it the fastest growing by time per person among the top 10.

MySpace Tops in Video Streams

In addition to a significant presence on the online music scene, MySpace continues to have a strong presence in the video streaming business, though Facebook is growing quickly. With 120.1 million total video streams, Myspace.com is the #1 social media site when ranked by streams for June 2009. It was also the #1 social networking site when ranked by unique viewers of video content, with 12.9 million viewers for the month.

Facebook was the fastest growing social media site by both total video streams and unique viewers of video. Total streams increased 434% year-over-year, from 10.1 million streams to 54 million streams. Unique viewers of video increased 397%, from 2.4 million in June 2008 to 12 million in June 2009.

About the data: Effective with June 2009 data reporting, Nielsen has made several enhancements to the NetView and VideoCensus services, including a panel that is eight times larger, more granular reporting and improved accuracy and representativeness. Nielsen noted that for some sites, trending of previously-reported data with current results may show percentage differences attributable to these product enhancements and should only be compared directionally.

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