Facebook Surges Past Myspace in US, Twitter Growth Accelerates

Traffic to Facebook has surged significantly in the past year or so which transformed the site into the most popular social networking platform in the US; on the other hand, rival MySpace has seen a considerable decline, according to data released by an internet monitoring company.

A research study conducted by Hitwise Experian showed that Facebook has shown a significant year-over-year growth for the month of September, registering 194 percent rise fro the same period a year back.

The social networking giant accounted for a massive 59 percent market share in the US - almost double that of the share of MySpace in the biggest market.

However, Facebook wasn’t solely responsible for a dramatic drop in the MySpace’s share, as Twitter also emerged as another very popular social networking destination during the period.

While the microblogging phenomenon has grabbed a mere 1.84 percent share in the US market, it has showed an incredible 1,170 percent growth on year-over-year basis.

Nonetheless, MySpace has ranked at the top in terms of the time users spend on the social networking website, as users on average spend 26 minutes on the Rupert Murdoch-owned website.

The research study further showed growth in the number of older users flocking to the social networking platforms, as people in the 55 plus age group on Facebook now accounts for 13.53 percent of its total number of users, up by 108 percent from September 2008.