Social media &
Top 10 Social Networking Sites by Market Share of Visits 2008-2011
Filed under: Facebook, Social Media, Surveys and stats
Three years of US social networking market share data on a single chart. Facebook is winning more and more users. The only social website that has some traction compared to Facebook is YouTube with 19.22 percent. MySpace is declined to oblivion with only 1.67 percent of market share remaining. One small but consistently growing site seems to be LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn is niche site limited to „business people“, so its penetration should remain below 5 percent even if they are wildly successful.
The chart supports my idea that there can be only one major social networking site. Only geeks and marketing droids are active on more than one social network at the time. It’s just too time consuming to be fully active on several social networking sites. As you can see from LinkedIn and Club Penguin there are some niches that might resist Facebooks dominance.
The chart below is in logarithmic scale so that the smaller sites wouldn’t just a single line around 1% of social network market share. Every month in the chart lists the top 10 sites of that time by the market share of visits. Please note that it is just a percentage and 30% in January 2009 is a lot less than 30% in September 2010. The gaps in the the lines mean that the site wasn’t in the top 10 at that time.
I used an interactive chart making software Tableau Public for this visualization. If you don’t see anything below please try reload. If all else fails then look at the image or download the chart in PDF format.
Posted on: March 22, 2011
Pingback: Top 10 Social Networking Sites by Market Share of Visits | DreamGrow Social Media
Pingback: Market Share of Social Networking Sites 2009 | DreamGrow Social Media
Really Twitter has less than 2% of market share?
Can anyone explain then why is Twitter so often recommended as such a great marketing tool in social media? There must be a reason.
Tõnis, niche, time on site, frequency and other factors make Facebook more engaging in general, but for business uses LinkedIn rocks.
tonis, twitter is perfect if you are targeting early adopters. Twitterites are characterized by wanting to be first and ahead of the game so if you can fill this need it’s all on. There’s also not as many promo restrictions as the other players ( eg Facebook). For good example look at Old Mout Cider.
Hey Tonis, Twitter is very useful because it provides customers with realtime, extremely relevant information.
The actual user base is probably considerably larger than this, but many Tweeters are casual users.
As a quick example, I run a number of Twitter searches based around our core industry keywords, looking for customers asking questions about Social Media or SEO etc, then I can reply directly to them instantly.
So, I might run a search with keywords like ‘can anyone’ ‘recommend” good’ ‘new’ ‘Bicycles’ ‘Florida”?’ and I’ll instantly have an updating list of people in Florida wanting to buy a new bike -obviously valuable if you own a local bike store, and it’s a great way to communicate with highly engaged customers who will help spread the word about your business across other networks:)
We did a presentation showing how we monetised Twitter that you might find interesting: http://ecly.co/9XeY58
Hope that helps,
Matt
Fascinating! Thanks for creating this. I’m sharing it with the Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community.
Courtney Hunt
Founder, SMinOrgs
Many twitter users interface with Twitter using portals such as HootSuite, Tweetdeck etc. I guess that those users are not counted in the twitter column, am I correct?
Priit –
As always, good stuff.
I am surprised. It looks like Twitter has peaked.
Twitter use through clients is somewhere around 60% if I judge by our traffic. But yes, seems that it is peaked.
Linked in is coming strong…
Time will tell if Twitter has peaked. I think the upside potential for it is huge, but it all depends on the strategic direction its leaders decide to take, and how that direction influences its attraction to folks who are currently not interested. I just published a blog post that indirectly speaks to why so many people don’t find it particularly attractive. It’s called “Unlucky 13? Twitter ‘Worst Practices’ that Rookies (and Others) Should Avoid,” and it can be accessed via http://tiny.cc/SMinOrgsTwitterPost.
Priit -
My gut feeling – I do not believe that Twitter has peaked.
I am interesting in seeing these number through 2011.
Thanks for distribution about the special social networking website
Hi! I just wish to offer you a big thumbs up for your great information you have got here on this post. I’ll be returning to your website for more soon.