14 DAY TRIAL // Don't rule Windows Live Spaces out of the race for eyeballs on the social networking world just yet. Over the past year, the Redmond company's online social hotspot delivered a consistent evolution in terms of the audience it managed to attract. According to Marketing Charts, and based on statistics compiled by Nielsen Online, Microsoft has gathered quite a crowd to Windows Live Spaces. At this point in time, Windows Live Spaces occupies the fourth position in the top 10 social networking sites for the U.S. market.
Nielsen Online revealed that Windows Live Spaces grew 8% in the past year. Between November 2006 and November 2007, the number of Windows Live Spaces unique users exploded from 8.8 million to 9.5 million, per month. But, in terms of the actual growth rate, Live Spaces outperformed the top social networking destination in the U.S. - MySpace.com. Although MySpace attracted more unique users in November 2007 compared to the same month of the past year, jumping from 53.5 million to 57.3 million, the growth rate is just 7%.
But, the most impressive explosions in terms of audience are neither Windows Live Spaces nor MySpace.com. LinkedIn, the occupant of the number six position increased its traffic in one year, by 245%, from 1.5 to 5.4 million. Club Penguin, coming in at number seven, has a growth rate of 98% and a unique audience in November 2007 of 4.3 million.
But of course that, in terms of social networking, all eyes are on Facebook. With a traffic growth of 89%, Facebook accounts now for some 21.9 million unique users, while one year ago it had just 11.6 million. This is nothing but good news for Microsoft, as the company has recently acquired a 5% minority stake in Facebook, placing the value of the social networking website at $15 billion.
