Monday 25 February 2008

Facebook experiences dip in traffic

The number of people visiting the UK's most popular social networking site has fallen for the first time, new findings have indicated.

According to internet research company Nielsen Online, traffic for Facebook fell by five per cent between December 2007 and January 2008, despite still having 8.5 million unique users in January.

MySpace, the country's second most popular social network, also experienced a five per cent drop in traffic during the same period.

However, Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen Online, said the results are not particularly worrying for Facebook.

He explained: "One month of falling audiences doesn't spell the decline of Facebook or social networking.

"However, most of the leading social networks are less popular in the UK than they were a year ago. It was inevitable that early growth rates couldn't be sustained and the larger networks have been plateauing over the last few months."

Facebook was launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg, a former student of Harvard university.

Category: Social Media

Technorati tags: social-media facebook experiences traffic