Who’s Hot and Who’s Not in Social Networking

I just ran across this on Mashable and decided to share the post with you via Flock.

My thoughts are that it’s interesting how MySpace is declining in unique audience, although people are spending a lot MORE time on the site overall. Why? Well, as someone who has a MySpace network that has reached the up side of huge, and given that many of my “friends” are actually REAL friends on there that I physically friended, (as in met in person and know), and as such requiring things like occasional posting, chatting and updates or I start to get hoards of “Where are you???” email…… I can understand why people are spending more time on MySpace when they do get up the courage to go there and deal with the upkeep.

There are so many widgets, quizzes, pokes, teases, flirts, winks and nudges on the networks now that some days it is easier to pull the “I’m Invisible” covers over your head and go back to sleep. Or at the very least, perhaps we could on some days consider actually calling or emailing friends rather than poking them and sending them little flying pigs online. Just kidding. Where would the fun be in that?

~Erika, Your Technology Goddess

(Mashable post below)

This morning, AOL’s Chariman and CEO Randy Falco said of his company’s acquisition, “Bebo is the perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media.” “Leading position” might be a bit of an overstatement, at least in the US, according to some statistics sent our way by Nielsen Online.

In February, Bebo received 2.25 million unique visitors in the US, placing it between Buzznet and Imeem in the rankings, and representing less than 5% of the traffic that MySpace received during the same period. While it did represent 86% year-over-year growth, users spent significantly less time on the site – 81% less than they did in February of last year.

As for the rest of the trends in the space, I’ve highlighted some of the hot and the cold (in orange and blue, respectively) in the chart below. Last month’s reports of Facebook’s demise seem to be greatly exaggerated, as the site is sporting 102% year-over-year unique audience growth. Meanwhile, MySpace growth has gone flat, though users are spending 10% more time on the site – not inconsequential when you consider how huge their audience is. That number should continue to rise with today’s consumer launch of their application platform.

One of the other most notable statistics – Last.fm users spent 180% more time on the site last month than they did in the same period last year. That can easily be attributed to Last.fm rolling out free streaming of full tracks on their Web site back in January, an initiative that parent company CBS has also been praising for its success in recent weeks.

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