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MySpace Gets 80% of Social Network Visits, Facebook Traffic Doubles

MySpace again dominated the social networking category in April, with 79.7% of visits to sites in the social-network category, according to Hitwise (via MarketingCharts).

Facebook was second, with 11.47% of visits; Bebo was third with 1.28% of category visits.

From April 2006 to April 2007, U.S. Visits to MySpace increased 70%, Facebook visits were up 126%, and visits to Bebo were up 184%, Hitwise said.

Facebook opened up to accept users without a school affiliation in September 2006. Previously, access had been limited to those with a college or high school email address. From September 2006 to April 2007, visits to Facebook grew 106%.

One in four visits (24.9% of upstream clicks) to the 19 other top social networking sites came directly from MySpace in April 2007, demonstrating its dominance and indicating that many users maintain more than one social network account, Hitwise said.

In April 2007, Facebook accounted for 2.85% of the upstream traffic to its 19 competitors, an increase of 185% from September 2006.

“Opening up to the entire internet audience had a positive effect for Facebook” said LeeAnn Prescott, director of research at Hitwise. “Clickstream data indicate that users at other social networking sites may be experimenting with Facebook as an alternative site, which may help it attain critical mass among non-collegiate users.”