What a difference a year can make. Visits to Facebook have nearly tripled since September 2008, while visits to MySpace have been reduced by half during the same period, according to new data from Hitwise. Twitter, meanwhile, experienced a 1,170 percent increase in visits over the last 12 months.
Facebook accounted for 58.59 percent of all social network visits in September, up from 19.94 percent in September 2008. A year ago, MySpace accounted for two-thirds of all U.S. social network visits, but now accounts for only 30.26 percent. Twitter experienced a meteoric rise over that period, but it still accounts for less than 2 percent of all visits and is the fourth most-visited social network, trailing Facebook, MySpace, and Tagged.com.
In a strange turn, MySpace users still spend more time on the network than Facebook users. Users spent an average of nearly 26 minutes on MySpace in September, compared to 23 minutes on Facebook.
Even more shocking is that Twitter took a major step backwards. Early adopters clearly spent lots of time on the site a year ago, averaging more than 36 minutes in September 2008. The average time spent on the microblogging platform shrank to just under 16 minutes this year, perhaps because of the increased number of users who abandon the site after initially signing up.
