Top 5 Social Networks For June 2010

The continuing and expanding influence of social networks is undeniable. EbizMba continues to track social network statistics and they are very impressive. Click here for their most recent report on 20 top social networking sites. Here for About Business we're going to focus on the top 5.

The top 5 sites for June 2010 are:

1) Facebook (www.facebook.com). Facebook claims more than 400 million members. That's more than the entire population of the United States. According to EbizMba, Facebook receives 250 million unique visitors a month. That's alot of friends and family keeping in touch with each other. Tracking site Alexa places Facebook as the #2 most visited site in the world. Google is #1. People are probably using google to get to Facebook. At 250 milion visitors per month Facebook provides a very large opportunity for any business enterprise.

2) MySpace (www,myspace.com). While not given the media attention that Facebook and Twitter receive, MySpace is holding its own with 122 million unique visitors per month and ranks #17 on Alexa's most visited sites per month. So it seems Rupert Murdock's investment in MySpace is paying off at least in terms of popularity.

3) Twitter (www.twitter.com). Twitter can claim 80.5 million unique visitors per month. That's more tweets than Tweety Bird could imagine. In June 2010 it's the 11th most visited site on the Internet. Twitter is a micro blog (limited to 140 characters) and would seem to go hand in hand with Facebook or MySpace for that matter.

4) LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com). LinkedIn, as the 4th most popular social networking site, will be a surprise to many. However, LinkedIn is receiving 50 million unique visitors per month. This site is for networking professionals or anyone looking for or offering a job or contract. Major and minor, large and small businesses are all represented on LinkedIn, including every Fortune 500 company. According to Alexa it is the 29th most visited site on the internet.

5) Ning (www.ning.com). Ning is new to me. It characterizes itself as a network for organizers and "influencers" and is quick and easy to use in the same way as Facebook and Twitter. While new to me, it is attracting 42 million unique visitors per month. That's a lot of people interested in social change. More on Ning in a future post. It is the 128th most visited site on the Internet.

The continuing expansion and popularity of social networking sites means that your business neighborhood is now global and that it would be in your business interest to be represented on these sites to get the word out about your enterprises. There is enormous opportunity in this marketplace.

In my next post I'll show how Business Magazines are using these social networking sites.

As an aside, I'll add that Libraries, such as the Berkshire Athenaeum. now have blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts and feature workshops enabling others to become active participants!

Top 20 Most Popular Websites

Alexa -- The Web Information Company tracks globally web surfer activity and comes up with daily statistics on most popular websites. As you can imagine this means dollars and cents in the global marketplace. And this puts into perspective the competition between Google, Yahoo. and Microsoft for dominance. Also it allows us to see where social media sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Craigslist are going.

Alexa is an Amazon.com owned company and, yes, it tracks companies like Amazon, Ebay and their reach across the globe. Besides what sites are being surfed, Alexa also breaks down average number minutes on each site, and who is using the site by age group, education, gender, income and location. These demographic breakdowns are essential in the competitive marketplace.

So what are the top 20 sites for United States websurfers? They are Google, followed by Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube(a Google company), MySpace, Windows Live, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Ebay, Microsoft Network, Blogger (a Google company), AOL, Amazon, Twitter, GO, Bing (Microsoft's new search engine), CNN, Flickr (a Yahoo company), WordPress (like Blogger, a free Blog service), and ESPN Sportzone. LinkedIn appears as number 24, Weather.com 25, and New York Times 28.

Google gets 34% of marketshre globally, Yahoo 26 %, Facebook 25%, and YouTube 24% and MySpace 4.5% and Twitter gets nearly 4%. Individuals spend more time on Facebook, an average of 27.5 minutes compared to Google's 7 minutes and YouTube's 22.5 minutes. Twitter users spend average of 8 minutes a day twittering. Bing, the new Microsoft search engine, is already in the top 20 at number 16 but amount of time spent is only 2.1 minutes. Nevertheless Bing can be seen as up and coming and Microsoft and Yahoo will be using Bing as their search engines, thus providing real competition for Google.

Now statistics such as these are not great for reading, but they do provide the nuts and bolts backdrop to news about Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and web trends. Notably, social media sites are heavily represented in these statistics. People are spending much of their time on these social sites, making friends, sharing photos and information, and exchanging and sharing files. News sites are not represented among the top twenty but they are represented in the top 50 and include the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. Amazon and Ebay make strong showings in the top 20 at 13 and 9 respectively. Internationally Google China is number 4 in China and Google Japan is dominant there. So these companies have taken an international position and are heavily represented there. Baidu, a Chinese search engine is number 1 there and because of this carries 6% world share of surfers.

Are these fleeting trends? Hard to believe but the World Wide Web is only 15 years old. Skeptics then said that money could not be made on the Internet. Today the World Wide Web is a vast economic engine. Amazon is turning profits. Microsoft and Yahoo and have been around for more than 10 years; Google celebrated its 10 anniversary this year. Colleges, Universities, the United States Postal Service and all government agencies are on the web. Any business will need, if it does not already have one, a presence on the web. In a short 15 years the World Wide Web has become a part of our daily discourse and activity. Today there is still skepticism about profitabilty but no question that the world wide web is here to stay. Ignoring its possibilities would be ignoring vast opportunity.

Alexa is a useful marketing and analytical tool in gauging the reach and progress of these critical websites and their positions in the global marketplace.