Facebook takes top spot in the U.K.

Facebook has risen from the U.K.’s third most popular social networking site in June, 2007, to take the top spot in August, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

by Helen Leggatt

While both Facebook and MySpace attract around a fifth of the U.K.’s online audience, Facebook has overtaken MySpace when it comes to the number of unique visitors. In August, 2007, MySpace had 6.4 million and Facebook 6.5 million.

“Three months ago I predicted Facebook would catch MySpace in September this year but it’s continued phenomenal growth meant it only took until August to achieve this feat,” said Alex Burmaster of Nielsen//NetRatings. “This is particularly extraordinary considering that at the end of 2006 Facebook was one fifth the size of MySpace.”

Facebook also topped the list of social networking sites on which U.K. users spent the most time in August, chalking up 991 million minutes compared with Bebo’s 600 million and MySpace’s 540 million.

Facebook was not, however, the fastest growing social networking site in the U.K., despite being up 541 percent from December, 2006, through August, 2007. A relative newcomer, Perfspot.com, that had no visitor figures available until April this year, has since grown by 756 percent.