Social networking traffic up 10% in one month – MySpace remains top dog

Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, recently performed a study on the market share of Internet visits to the top 20 social networking websites. Between the period of January 2007 to February 2007, traffic grew by 11.5 percent, which accounts for 6.5 percent of all Internet traffic in February 2007.

The data was based on a custom category of the 20 leading social networking sites; of which, MySpace was by far the most dominant social networking website with a near 81% market share among the 20 sites.

Those that showed the greatest increase were Buzznet – up 148%, and iMeem, up 145% in the first month of the year; although, both remain at a less than 1% market share.

The second and third positions went to social networking sites Facebook and Bebo, with a 10.32% and 1.18% market share, respectively.

“While MySpace is still by far the dominant social networking website, sites like Buzznet and iMeem are succeeding in building communities around music and other media” said LeeAnn Prescott, director of research at Hitwise. “The social networking category will continue to grow as new sites emerge with unique offerings.”

The study was conducted using hitwise’s sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users, and only reflect visits among the 20 websites within the custom category.

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