Social Networking Sites Analysis

(Co-authored with Pujitha Kalluri. This article is just a section of the paper presented at NIT Warangal Cura)

Through the ages, 1976 – 2009 social networking sites had seen many trends. The older versions like BBS, CompuServe are almost extinct and sites started in 2003-2004 like Facebook, Myspace are now the major networking sites. The user base too has seen a tremendous increase from a few thousand users to more than 1 Billion users today. Looking at the network traffic and reach of the websites will help us in identifying the changes in trends. The five major networking sites today are Facebook, MySpace, Habbo, Orkut and Qzone with each of them boasting more than 100 million active users. But Habbo and Qzone have no presence in India. Instead of Habbo and Qzone we can consider Twitter and LinkedIn who have a base of 50-75 million users and have a major presence in India. These five sites Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Twitter and LinkedIn put together boast of 700 million user accounts. If we look at the trends of these five sites they have been vastly different. These trends can be observed using network traffic, daily reach and time on site.

Daily Reach:

Daily Reach means percent of Internet Users visiting that particular site. If we look at the 2008-2009 graphs for daily reach we see significant changes in just the two years. Facebook has shown the greatest increase from 8% reach in the beginning of 2008 to 30% reach in December 2009. Twitter on the other hand has grown from zilch to 5% daily reach. Orkut fell in the first few months of the year to almost 1% reach but then rose steadily to 2%. Myspace had a steady fall from 7% to 4% reach. LinkedIn saw a steady increase to 2% reach from less than 0.5% in the beginning of 2008.

Fig 2: Daily Reach (2008-2009)

Fig 3: Daily Reach (excluding Facebook)

Time spent on site:

The time spent on site is helpful in analysis the attractiveness of the social networking site. Facebook has seen an increase from 22 minutes in Jan 2008 to around 35 minutes in December 2009. Orkut has seen a drastic fall from 45 minutes to less than 5 minutes showing that the users are less interested in spending time on the site. Twitter, Myspace and LinkedIn are more or less stable without much change in time spent.

Fig 4: Time spent (2008-2009)

Network Traffic:

Network Traffic is the most important factor to consider a site’s success. Traffic can be generated by attracting more users to the website and keeping them engaged. Traffic Rank is calculated using the average of Daily Reach and Page-views of the site. Facebook has gone up the charts to Rank 2 only next to Google. It overtook YouTube and Yahoo in its journey. Orkut fell from 10^th position to 60^th position in Network Traffic. Twitter has seen the most significant increase among all the sites from 3000^th rank to 14^th rank. MySpace saw a fall in ranks though at a much lesser scale than orkut. LinkedIn rose from 200^th rank to 50^th rank.

Fig 5: Traffic Rank (2008-2009)

Analysis of Network Traffic:

Even though the data analysis is for just a two year period the change in trends is clear from the above parameters showing the transient nature of networking sites. While Facebook and Twitter had grown in network traffic, Orkut and MySpace fell. Orkut not only lost the reach but its existing users are also spending lesser time on the website compared to 2008. Myspace has lost reach but its existing users are spending the same time they had spent two years ago on the site. LinkedIn a site started in 2004 has grown steadily across the years the variations have been stable rather than spiked. But, the above analysis does not show why people have switched networking sites? What causes people to switch?

The internet says that micro-blogging has become a craze due to the increase in mobile phones. Twitter and Facebook provide a simple interface for micro-blogging when compared to other sites. Facebook also has many applications support services like Mafia wars, Farmville and so on that attracts many users. People also feel that Facebook provides more privacy and security features than orkut, orkut has controversies like ‘I hate India’ communities. Orkut has been banned in many countries like Iran and UAE. Orkut was also vulnerable to many virus attacks. Psychologists also feel that the name ‘Facebook’ has got a lot to do in attracting visitors.