The global face of social networking

A new report from comScore reveals that several of the major social networking sites have experienced dramatic growth over the past year, and the trend is global.

by Helen Leggatt

comscore%20logo.gif Social networking continues to rise in popularity with Internet users across the globe. Recent figures released by comScore reveal huge rises in the number of visitors to the largest of the social networks. What was once considered a fad now attracts audiences that put it in the mainstream.

"Typically we see that, whenever that happens, advertisers will follow the eyeballs,” said comScore’s EVP Jack Flanagan, via Clickz.

Tagged.com experienced the highest rate of growth, up 774 percent, visitors rose from 1,506 last June, to 13,167 this June. During the same period Facebook achieved a 270 percent growth rate, Bebo 172 percent and MySpace 72 percent. MySpace attracted almost 114 million visitors during June, 2007.

The popularity of a social networking site appears to be dependent on the audience's geographic region. Both MySpace and Facebook attract predominately North American audiences, around two-thirds according to comScore.

Bebo is the choice of European social networkers with 63 percent of its users coming from that region and Friendster attracts 89 percent of its audience from Asia-Pacific.

Orkut is the darling of users in the Asia-Pacific and Latin American countries, according to the report.

"Literally hundreds of millions of people around the world are visiting social networking sites each month and many are doing so on a daily basis," said Bob Ivins, ComScore’s EVP of international markets.

"It would appear that social networking is not a fad but rather an activity that is being woven into the very fabric of the global internet," added Ivins.