Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008

Jeremiah Owyang

Stats on social networks are important, but I’m going to need your help in creating a community archive, can you submit stats as you find them?
I’m often asked, “What are the usage numbers for X social network” and I’ve received considerable traffic on my very old post (way back in Jan) of MySpace and Facebook stats, even months later. Decision makers, press, media, and users are hungry for numbers, so I’ll start to aggregate them as I see them
An industry analysts’ perspective on web measurement:To be clear, my employer Forrester doesn’t provide specific numbers about social networks like Compete, Comscore, Nielsen or others, we conduct our own surveys on user/brand behavior, opinions, and technographics, so I’m often asked for these numbers by press. I’ll use this page as a library, and point clients, press, and media to it, so they’re armed.
Numbers don’t tell us much without insight and intrepreation, in fact, you’re going to see conflicting numbers of usage from many of the agencies and social networks themselves. The key is to look at trend movements, don’t focus on the specific numbers but the changes to them over time.
I put more weight on active unique users in the last 30 days vs overall registered, in fact, the actual active conversion rate will often range from 10-40% of actual users sticking around and using the social network, so don’t be fooled by puffed numbers.
No single metric is a good indicator, you have to evaluate the usage from multiple dimensions, so you also have to factor in what are users doing, time on site, interaction, and of course, did they end up buying, recommending products, or improving their lives.
Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008
All Social Networks
Overall growth, Unique Audience of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, LInkedIn, MySpace and beyond, Oct 23, 2008, Nielsen Wire
Social Media Stats: This comprehensive wiki has additional data, Helen Lawrenece
Membership in social sites: Facebook, MySpace… and Classmates.com, Oct 2008, Rubicon Consulting
Extensive list of social networks by traffic, and google insights mentions, and demographics (but doesn’t state source), it’s best to use this comparatively, Dec 2008, Ignite Social Media
UK Social networking stats show growth, Hitwise Dec 2008
Social TechnographicsUnderstand how people use different social technologies –the first step before you determine which tools to use.
Social Technographics Profile Tool, Forrester Research
New 2008 Social Technographics data reveals rapid growth in adoption, Forrester Research
AdultFriendFinder
59 million unique worldwide visitors per month according to comScore, For the nine months ended September 30, 2008, we averaged more than four million new member registrations on our websites each month, averaged over one million paying subscribers each month from whom we derived 77.2% of our internet revenues. Dec, 2008 IPO statements
Bebo
40 million registered users, Nov 2008, from Bebo directly to me
Beth Kanter has an archive of stats she’s taken screenshots of, as well as this handy index list.
BlogHer
Nielsen Site Census on all of the 2,500 blogs in our Publishing Network, and December, 2008 ended up with: 14.2MM uniques, 62MM page views. Comscore, a panel-based solution, a panel based survey indicated November, 2008 with 6MM uniques. Comscore typically runs at about 50% of our audit trails from Nielsen Site Census. Source: Told to me direct by Blogher, on Jan 2009
A treasure trove of stats are available in this PDF report, read the last slides about not even giving up chocolate!, Blogher, 2008
Digg
“Although the company claims it has 35 million unique users per month, independent researcher comScore (SCOR) says that Digg had 16.3 million users worldwide in October 2008, up 31% from last October’s user base of 12.4 million”, also “But according to Quantcast’s Web site, Digg.com claimed 21.7 million global users as of Nov. 30″, Dec 2008, Business Week
Facebook
Facebook usage skyrockets from election activity: Includes specific usage numbers, fans and supporters, Nov 5th, Source: Zdnet
Facebook 18 Million Unique Visitors in UK, top 5th overall web property, Sep-Aug 08, Source: Comscore
More than 120 million active users (does not indicate measure of active), Facebook is the 4th most-trafficked website in the world, More than 400,000 developers and entrepreneurs from over 160 countries, Over 52,000 applications are currently available on Facebook Platform, Nov 2008, from Facebook Stats Page
I was told by Mark Zuckerberg (face to face) that the total number of registered users is now 140mm, Dec, 2008
If the numbers are right, Facebook’s online users have grown by 30 million in the last four months, up from 90 million users in early July 2008. That means that Facebook is growing much faster than the 250,000 new users per day that the company had previously estimated, Nov 3, 2008, Epoch Times
Gather
Demographies: ages 25-54, median age is 42, 55% women, 1.2 milliion unique vistiors, 9 million pages views per month, 500k are registered, Dec 2008, as told to me by CEO Tom Gerace
Hi5
World’s fastest growing among the top-10 global social networks. Based on the June comScore Media Metrix worldwide figures, hi5 grew 79% in the first half of 2008 – more than twice the growth rate of any of the top 10 social networks. According to comScore, the popular site’s monthly unique visitors increased from 31.4 million in December 2007 to 56.4 million in June 2008 – an increase of 25 million monthly visitors. hi5’s October 2008 Worldwide daily average is: 505 million, July 2008 stats, as told to me by Adriana of Corp Comm of Hi5 team.
LinkedIn
Nearly 60% of LinkedIn users have high personal incomes and hold executive-level or consultant positions, Nov 10th, 2008, LinkedIn, Anderson Analytics.
LinkedIn demographics presentation from Aug, 2008, Erick of Techcrunch
Stats from CEO: 8 million to more than 30 million, while the staff has expanded from 60 to 370 employees, CEO alludes (but doesnt confirm nor deny) that revenues are $75 (million) to $100 million, The average age is 41 years old. The average household income is $109,000; 76 percent of them have a college degree or a graduate degree. It’s pretty evenly split between men and women, slightly more men. Forty-eight percent are outside the United States, from 07 to 2008. Nov, SFGate.
LiveJournal
LiveJournal is almost 10 years old and has 1.9 million active users (PDF), Dec, 2009
MySpace
MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users around the globe, Jan 2008, emailed to me from press
Reunion
32 Million Registered Members, and Growing. Jan, 2008, Reunion to me direct
Update, Nov 20, 2008: 50 million total registered members, Adding 1.6 million+ members monthly (mostly adults), Nearly 1 million active paying subscribers. Numbers direct from Kate Zentall of Reunion to me.
Second LIfe
Second Life provides real time stats: Residents Logged-In During Last 30 Days: 985,92 (out of 16 million total registered). Nov 18, 2008, Linden Site
Twitter
Global visitors to Twitter rose almost fivefold to 5.57 million in September from a year earlier. Nov 12, 2008, Comscore via BBC.
Locations (Cities) with the most tweets, Tokyo is the most popular city, Real TimeTwitter Local
Twitter stats by usage during week, as well as comparing heavy vs light users, May 15th, Compete (submitted by Nick)
HP Labs has conducted research on twitter, I’ve highlighted the average number of followers, friends, tweets, and active user base.
Twitter is dominated by newer users – 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008, An estimated 5-10 thousand new accounts are opened per day, 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers, 9% of Twitter users follow no one at all, Dec 08, State of the Twittersphere
WeeWorld
This virtual world/social network aimed at teens who also use IM has reported 25mm registered users, and 1million unique active visitors in last 30 days, as told to me in Nov 2008 on briefing call
2009 Stats
Need more stats See this ongoing list of social networking stats for 2009.
Caveat: As I mentioned before, do not quote these numbers are from me, I’m simply collecting them in one spot, as you’ll see the accuracy will be debated depending on source to source.
I need your help, as you find references to usage, visitors, or registered members numbers in articles or reports, please leave a comment with the URL.