Facebook shows 125% growth year over year

MySpace may be the grandfather of all social networks, but another social platform is catching up fast. According to new research from Nielsen//Netratings, Facebook posted the largest growth year over year for October.

by Kristina Knight

According to the report, Facebook saw 125% growth from October 2006 to October 2007. This is likely due to the fact that Facebook only recently opened to public use; it has previously only been open to college or university students. Comparatively MySpace, which still has the largest number of users, showed only 19% growth.

The report shows MySpace now has nearly 59 million unique users compared to 49 million uniques in 2006. Facebook has 19 million uniques compared to 8 million uniques in 2006.

After the "Big Two" social networks, Classmates.com has the most unique users (13 million) but showed a decrease YoY of 2%. Windows Live Spaces is next with 10 million unique users, an increase of 32%. Rounding out the top five is AOL Hometown with 7.9 million unique users, a decrease of 15%.

Career social platform LinkedIn showed tremendous growth year over year (189%), growing from just over 1 million users in 2006 to more than 4 million in 2007.

With social networks showing continued strength, online marketers would do well to take notice of the trend. Social marketing efforts are beginning to take higher precedence among online advertisers but knowing where to advertise is very important. Following the growth trends among the different platforms will help when planning a campaign.