Facebook bigger than Porn but smaller than Blogs
When Time magazine reported that more people visit Facebook than porn sites a lot of people sat up and took notice. (It was actually for the segment 18 – 24, older folks still have a greater penchant for flesh than Poking it seems – if only just.)
But according to Technorati’s latest State of the Blogosphere report 2008 blogs have more visitors than Facebook or MySpace in the US. (MySpace is still considerably larger than Facebook in the US.)
Citing comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008):
* Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
* Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million
Would this be true internationally? It certainly seems that way.
According to Universal McCann (March 2008) 346 million people word wide read blogs. Although I’m not sure if this is a per monthly figure.
Globally Facebook is bigger than MySpace. Facebook had 123.9 million unique visitors and 50.6 billion page views worldwide in May 2008, according to the research firm ComScore. MySpace, meanwhile, had 114.6 million unique visitors and 45.4 billion page views.
An important question. How do advertisers reach all those thousands of users on thousands of blogs? The web is still not shaping up to be like traditional media (where everybody uses a few media channels), and it probably never will.
2 comments
Still, if I read it correctly, in the US these two social networks together have a lot more unique visitors, than the thousands of blogs do, is that correct?
How do advertisers reach all those thousands of users on thousands of blogs?
Yes, interesting that. But blogs are also merging with mainstream web media, they are used a lot on newssites/papers, and to complement corporate websites, or simply used as the medium/technology on which websites are set up. So maybe along with the still increasing popularity of old-school blogging, what we are seeing is another merging of technologies. Using elements of the blogging medium where appropriate – and undoubtedly also where inappropriate – in other websites.
Anyhow, guess advertisers will have to get blogging. A lot.
I suspect there’s some users that visit both MySpace and Facebook because they are quite different in some respects. But I also suspect that you are right, together they probably have more unique users than the plethora of blogs.
‘But blogs are also merging with mainstream web media, they are used a lot on newssites/papers, and to complement corporate websites, or simply used as the medium/technology on which websites are set up.’
Absolutely. Technorati actually says as much in their state of the nation report. “…as the Blogosphere grows in size and influence, the lines between what is a blog and what is a mainstream media site become less clear. Larger blogs are taking on more characteristics of mainstream sites and mainstream sites are incorporating styles and formats from the Blogosphere. In fact, 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs.”
Advertiser’s problem is mainly the question of reach. How do they get to be on thousands of blogs? There are so many competing ad networks now. Any many blogs don’t have any ad code embedded at all.
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