The Social Network Race – Who Are the Top Contenders?

By fbTown Editors - Posted on October 19th, 2007

Following up on the last post, we know there is a huge race race going on between the social networking sites. We decided to do a little rundown on five of the main competitors and their page view stats from Alexa.

MySpace . With more than 200 million users and with one of the highest usage minutes per day, myspace is the leader (ok this is disputed by many but lets give them the benefit for now). As you can see it is also the leader in page views. For now, that is. Facebook is catching up very quickly and if the trends continue it will be a matter of months before facebook will overtake myspace. The myspace application platform has been announced now and we think developers aren't going to be able to resist the chance to get access to 200 million users. Even if the site is flash, tacky and horrible looking. 200 million pairs of eyes. Wow.

Bebo . Can't see their stats? ‘Nuff said. Ok, no seriously, they are the flat yellow line at the bottom. Although it doesn't look rosey for bebo from the page view stats, they have a huge following in the UK and they claims to be the largest social networking site in the there, Ireland and New Zealand. They also claim to have 35 million users. They have inked various partner deals with yahoo, apple and skype. Don't count them out yet... but they better get some growth going to catch up to the leaders of the pack. Oh, and they have $15 in VC capital, which is a pittance compared to the deep pockets of newscorp, google and facebook.

bebo, facebook, hi5, myspace and orkut page view statistics for october 2007

Hi5 . Has been a huge hit almost everywhere in the world other than the USA. Their strategy of providing multiple languages and an easy to use platform has paid off in the form of 70 million users. As you can see by the graph, they have been climbing steadily alongside facebook for the last six months. The other networks don't have the language capability and are all mostly English only. Ok, myspace is venturing into new countries, but there has been low adoption rates for most of those ventures. They now have a beta API for developers and they will be a serious contender if they keep doing things right.

Orkut . Is a bland offering that is happily going along with about 30 million users. The stats say that traffic has dropped off in the last 2 months a bit but it doesn't really matter. They will be a contender. Why. Google owns them of course. They have piles of cash and have also announced that they will open up their social graph and access to their users via a ‘facebook like' platform. They have the cash to fight it out and once they start integrating the social graph into the rest of the google apps... they are going to have some SERIOUS functionality and the social graph. Orkut is the dark horse that will likely step up and run a great if not awesome long term race.

Facebook . The graph says it all. They are the fastest growing social network in town at the moment. Everyone has been reading about it, discussing it and joining up to get hooked up with old friends and new. This is not a fad, old and young alike are joing by the millions to see what this facebook thing is about. Some may say throwing sheep and turning your friends into zombies is stupid but that will wear thin after a while. Whatever the naysayers say, facebook's f8 developer platform is a runaway success and the other guys are racing to build one too and lure the builders of all the applications for their users to interact. As we know, there are deal talks going on with several very large companies going on right now. If one of these mega deals goes through, facebook will sell a small portion of the company and have a HUGE warchest of cash to keep the growth rolling. We like it so much for the long term, we started a whole website about it!

Yes, we know there are lots of sites that have been left out, leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments and we may write about the other ones later!

Post in:

Hi5? Never heard about it

Submitted by anne (not verified) on Sat, 10/20/2007 - 10:12.

Hi5? Never heard about it before... I am from Denmark (Scandinavia), live in Australia and is a heavy Internet user. So it could be interesting to learn in which countries "outside the US" Hi5 is known!

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