New data has confirmed Facebook as the fast-moving social network to watch in the UK. On share of social network visits, the former campus-only net is only the third-placed site in Britain (12.82%) to MySpace (33.77%) and Bebo (33.53%), according to latest Hitwise figures – but the site has seen around a nine-fold increase in traffic since opening its gates to non-students in September. Meanwhile, according to comScore, Facebook’s unique monthly UK users grew from just 500,000 in October to 3.69 million at the end of April, a growth of 1,617 percent (Guardian).
Bebo’s traffic share rose threefold in the year to April while MySpace grew around two and a half times, Hitwise found, with the former poised to overtake MySpace this month, having ranked number one for the last three weeks. But it’s Facebook that now seems to be the hottest property. Anecdotally, many of my friends who had only just discovered MySpace have now upped and left for the more structured communication confines of Facebook, where they are better able to reconnect with old classmates and colleagues.