Facebook Triples Its Market Share in the US in Just One Year

Facebook just keeps on growing and its worldwide dominance is matched by its growing share of the US market. The social network has just managed to overtake MySpace in the country less than half a year ago and now it's already distancing itself in terms of market share, grabbing a 59-percent slice.

MySpace, on the other hand, got just 30 percent of the visits in the US in September 2009, according to data from Hitwise. While this might not seem like such a big difference, the numbers are in stark contrast with the ones from a year ago. In September 2008, MySpace was the name of the game, with almost 67 percent of the visits to a social network in the US, while Facebook was just under 20 percent. The rise represents a 194-percent growth for Facebook, but a 55-percent drop for MySpace, a trend that seems to be accelerating.

In fact, Facebook has grabbed roughly three percent from MySpace in just one month, going from 55.15 percent, in August, to 58.59 percent, while MySpace dropped from 33 percent to 30.26 percent. MySpace managed to at least hold the leading spot in one metric, with users still spending the most amount of time on the News Corp-owned social network, 25:56 minutes in September 2009, a drop from 29:37 minutes in the same month last year. Facebook, on the other hand, saw an increase on the time spent on the social network, but not enough to overtake MySpace just yet, with users spending 23 minutes on the site last month, compared with 18:23 minutes a year ago.

Meanwhile, the upstart Twitter is still far, far behind the two main competitors, despite being the fourth most visited social network in the US. It managed to get just a 1.84-percent piece of the market, actually dropping from last month's 1.95 percent, but a huge increase over the last year, when it got just 0.15 percent. It's also doing less than great when it comes to the time spent on the social network, dropping from 36:27 minutes last year to just 15:52 today.