Facebook Visits Triple In A Year, MySpace Falls By Half

Facebook is doing well. Most experts already know that. But, the No.1 social network’s size has surged at a remarkable rate over the last year. Nearly 60% of the visits to the top social networks in September were to Facebook. That is up from less than 20% in the same month a year ago.

The mountain Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NYSE:NWS) division MySpace has to climb is getting steeper and steeper. Murdoch replaced most of the senior management at MySpace several months ago, but the move may have been too late. Visits to the social network dropped to 30% of all internet visits to the category from 67% in September 2008.

Hitwise, which made the measurements, also said that Twitter grew 1,170% over the September to September period, but it remains a tiny faction of the social network landscape with only 1.84% of total visits in the category.

Industry experts believe that Facebook will have $500 million in revenue this year, but at 60% of social network visits it may be reaching the point of market saturation Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) has in the search sector. That means that Facebook has the challenge of getting more money from each of its visits, probably through marketing money from large advertisers. These marketers, however, have been reluctant to spend money for a medium where it is difficult to reach discrete groups of people and where risque content is fairly widespread.

Murdoch’s problems with MySpace may be so bad that they cannot be effectively addressed. Last year, the site brought in about $700 million, mostly through a search advertising deal with Google. The shrinkage of the MySpace visitor population will hurt the chances of MySpace renewing the Google deal, but Murdoch has a deeper problem. The migration of social network users from MySpace to Twitter and Facebook has become an exodus. MySpace may not be able to add enough attractive features to the site to get those people back.

The Hitwise numbers also point to the relatively small and tenuous hold that Twitter has in the social network market. Its micro-blogging service has limited potential for advertisers and may be only a fad. Research indicates that most people with Twitter accounts use them infrequently.

Facebook is the clear winner in the social network space. It still has to figure out how to capitalize on that.

Douglas A. McIntyre