Facebook Continues UK Growth

AdViking was probably a bit hasty earlier this year in suggesting that people were burnt on social networks in the UK.  Hitwise has released some stats over the last month that show this just the opposite, well at least for Facebook UK.

Facebook Enters Top 3

Hitwise says that Facebook is now the third most visited site in the UK, with 2.75% of all UK visits in July going to Facebook.  In the graph below they are comparing Facebook to Live Mail (Hotmail) and eBay UK – though from the caveats given, if Hitwise bundled in a couple of other eBay properties they would be higher. 

What AdViking thinks is interesting here is that Facebook is a major traffic destination, which brings a couple of questions to mind:

1. Due to the social nature of Facebook and the easy ability to recommend links what is the downstream effect of Facebook growing?
2. And is this hitting Search Engines at all?  (If yes to 2. then the Live Search / Facebook deal could be quite a coup).

Facebook #1 of the Social Networks

Then just looking at the UK Social Networks, Hitwise has it that Facebook is  now heavily leading the league table with a 45.29% market share.

The most striking point is that this growth has come at the expense of Bebo (which was historically  strong in the UK and part of the appeal to AOL) and mostly MySpace, which shed 50% of it’s market share.

Couple of other interesting points:

• Club Penguin is #6 – pretty impressive for a virtual world aimed at 8-12 year olds
• Nasza Klasa @ #8 is a Polish network, which highlights the digital nature (and probable education level) of the plumbers, painters and cleaners, etc. who have come from Poland to the UK

So, as AdViking said earlier, it was probably a little too early to start sounding the death knell for Facebook this year but the burning question then has to be:  How will they successfully monetise all this traffic?

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