Facebook still dominates the UK social network sector, with nearly 54% of the market share, but YouTube remains the fastest growing, according to new research from Hitwise.
After three consecutive months of declining share of visits within the UK social networking market, Facebook picked up again in June, with a 0.11% growth in market share of visits between May and June 2011, Hitwise found.
YouTube was the fastest growing social network for the fourth consecutive month, with more than twice as much growth as Facebook during June.
YouTube increased its presence in social by extending its market share of visits to the Experian Hitwise Social Networking and Forums category from 20.52% in May to 20.76% in June. Facebook was the second fastest growing social network of the month, followed by Tumblr.
Year-on-year YouTube also exhibited the fastest growth in market share, going from 1 in 6 visits to all social networks a year ago to 1 in 5 visits to all social networks today. Three of the top 10 social networks lost market share this month: Gumtree, Moshi Monsters and MySpace.
Robin Goad, Research Director of Experian Hitwise, said: “Much like Google, Facebook has established itself as the clear market leader in its field and continues to maintain that position. There has been a lot of rumourmongering recently that the end is nigh for Facebook, but as this month’s data shows, the UK’s most popular social network has overcome a small dip in performance and still accounts for nearly 54% of all UK visits to a social network.
“Facebook is still flourishing, and with over 750 million active users worldwide is by far the most powerful social network in the world. Our research has revealed that for every one fan acquired on Facebook, retailers can expect to receive 20 additional visits to their website over the course of a year, so investing in Facebook has real tangible benefits to website traffic, and hence online sales.”
Source: www.hitwise.com/uk
