Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter make up 67.0% of the Social Networking and Forums industry, and receive substantial media coverage. They each sit inside the top 50 websites visited by all New Zealand Internet users in November 2009:

2. Facebook

6. You Tube

18. Bebo

35. Twitter

43. MySpace

The following chart represents the past three years of growth in the Social Networking and Forums industry and highlights Facebook as the engine powering the growth in share of visits by New Zealand users.

Since December 2007 the Social Networking and Forums category has experienced relative growth of 44.0% (as at November 2009).Facebook has been responsible for almost all of this increase gaining 4.3% share of visits by all New Zealand Internet users.

Facebook’s growth has not slowed in the past year, adding over half the volume growth of the past two years (November 2007- November 2009), and quadrupling its share of visits in the process from 1.4% to 5.8%.

In sharp contrast MySpace has suffered substantial losses of share of visits over the past two years, losing 56.3% to currently hold 0.16% share of all visits, or one in every 625 visits by New Zealand Internet users.

During the past three years MySpace’s share of visits peaked in the month of February 2007 when it held a 0.64% share, responsible for one every 156 visits.

Over the past 12 months the decline in MySpace’s share has continued, shedding 33.0% of its share of visits. This trend indicates further decline in MySpace share unless the recently launched MySpace Music can have a positive impact and halt any further degradation of their share of visits.

Bebo is also under pressure having lost 44.7% of its share of visits in the past year from a peak of 0.87% market share in December 2008, to 0.41% in November 2009, well down from the peak of 2.17% in October 2008.

Online video continues to increase in popularity with YouTube growing its share of visits by 64.2% over the past two years (November 2009 compared to November 2007) to currently hold 1.82% of all visits, or one in every 55 visits. YouTube’s share has levelled in the past year experiencing just 1.1% growth.

Micro-blogging service Twitter has been on an amazing growth curve in the past year and has taken the media attention from Facebook’s performance, largely due to Twitter’s growth numbers being so astonishingly high – 656.6% growth in the past twelve months (comparing November 2009 to November 2008). Note that this data is based on visits to Twitter’s website, and does not include application and mobile traffic.

While fortunes have changed for individual websites, the industry has grown predominantly on the back of a single market maker – Facebook. The utility and ubiquity of Facebook through Facebook Connect and third-party applications has established not only a strong aggressive growth path, but sets it in good defensive stead to avoid the audience decline currently being experienced by MySpace and Bebo.

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Copyright Hitwise Intelligence – Analyst Weblogs – Facebook driving the Industry growth (NZ)