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Facebook Visits Increase 149 Percent in February 2009

Social Networking U.S. visits up 4 percent; MySpace top-visited site;
Older visitors using Facebook more

New York, NY  - Mar. 13, 2009 -U.S. visits to social networking Web sites increased 4 percent in February 2009 versus February 2008 among a custom category of 55 of the leading sites, according to Hitwise^®, an Experian company. Visits decreased 1 percent compared with January 2009 among those sites. MySpace accounted for 52.21 percent of those visits, the highest in the category, despite a decrease in visits of 28 percent compared with February 2008.    

U.S.visits to Facebook increased 149 percent in February 2009 compared with February 2008. The site received the second-highest market share of U.S. visits for the month, with 36.03 percent. Tagged received 2.47 percent of visits in February 2009, the third-largest amount, and had the largest percentage gain in market share of visits among the top five visited Web sites, increasing 280 percent compared with February 2008.

MySpace top in average time spent
MySpace had the highest average time spent among the top five most visited social networking Web sites, with 29 minutes and 38 seconds — representing a decrease of 2 percent compared with February 2008. Classmates experienced the largest growth in average time spent among the top five sites, increasing 9 percent in February 2009 to 11 minutes and 14 seconds. Both Facebook and Tagged saw an increase of 6 percent in time spent on their sites.

Older users showing up on Facebook
Looking at the demographic breakdown of visitors to MySpace and Facebook, users between the ages of 18 and 34 still dominate, as 58.81 percent and 53.91 percent of U.S. visits, respectively, came from those combined age groups in February 2009. This represents a 2 percent growth for MySpace and a 14 percent decline for Facebook in terms of year-over-year percentages. Visitors to the sites who are 35 or older have increased 23 percent to Facebook in February 2009 compared with February 2008, while visitors from that age group to MySpace have declined 2 percent.

About Hitwise
Hitwise, an Experian company is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive Web sites and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy-to-use, Web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, an Experian company (FTS: EXPN), www.experianplc.com, operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up-to-date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.