US visits to social networking websites increased 4% in February 2009 vs. February 2008 among a custom category of 55 of the top properties, while visits decreased 1% compared with January 2009 among those sites, according to data from Hitwise.
MySpace accounted for 52.21% of those visits, the highest in the category, despite a decrease in visits of 28% compared with February 2008.
Facedbook, Tagged Grow Fast
In contrast to MySpace’s negative growth, US visits to Facebook increased 149% in February 2009 compared with February 2008. The site received the second-highest market share of US. visits for the month, with 36.03%. Tagged received 2.47% of visits in February 2009, the third-largest number, and had the largest percentage gain in market share of visits among the top five visited websites increasing 280% compared with February 2008.
MySpace Tops Average Time Spent
MySpace had the highest average time spent among the top five most visited social networking sites, with 29 minutes and 38 seconds – though this represents a decrease of 2% compared with February 2008.
Classmates.com experienced the largest growth in average time spent among the top five sites, increasing 9% in February 2009, to 11 minutes and 14 seconds. Both Facebook and Tagged saw an increase of 6% in average time spent on their sites.
Older Users Show up on Facebook
Looking at the demographic breakdown of visitors to MySpace and Facebook, users between the ages 18-34 still dominate, as 58.81% and 53.91% of US visits, respectively, came from those combined age groups in February 2009. This represents a 2% growth for MySpace and a 14% decline for Facebook in terms of year-over-year percentages. Visitors to the sites who are age 35+ have increased 23% to Facebook in February 2009 compared with February 2008, while visitors from that age group to MySpace have declined 2%.