Almost half of all serious Internet users visited a social-networking Web site last month reported Nielsen//MetRatings. They added that all the big players in this field enjoyed huge growth in the last year.
The huge big numbers that are drawn in by the social networking sites strengthen their tremendous, continuing importance on the Web, not only as vehicles for media, but also as an emerging form of entertainment for a large segment of the population. Just taking the top 10 social-networking sites, you have a 47 percent increase from last year, with over 68 million users in April of 2006 alone. This is 45 percent of all people using the Web.
MySpace is still the frontrunner, which is no surprise I'm sure as they grew by an extraordinary 367 percent in the last year, with 38.4 million unique users.
The free blogging site Blogger.com has also shown some strong growth as it has seen its visitors grow by 80 percent to 18.5 million unique users. This places it at number two on the list, just ahead of Classmates.com. YouTube.com, which wasn't even measured by Nielsen//NetRatings last year, has developed a quick audience of 12.5 million unique users to come in at fourth on the list.
Others on the list are: MSN Groups, AOL Hometown, Yahoo Groups and Xanga.com.
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