A study by Compete.com (via) shows Facebook as the most visited social network, with nearly 1.2 billion visits in January 2009! That's a 256% increase over twelve months. The biggest mover was Twitter; with nearly 55 million vists, the site has grown by 1,227% in 12 months and now ranks as the third most popular social networking site.
Facebook also took the top spot for number of visits per unique visitor and average time spent on the site. Unlike MySpace, Facebook and Twitter both show an upward climb in these two important areas.
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While these figures are for the U.S. internet population only and do not include access from desktop clients, what is clear by this study is that 2008 was a successful year for Facebook and that their forward thinking attitude is paying off. Twitter though is by far 2008's success story proving that it should be considered as one of the social media marketing touchpoints.
In another study eMarketer reported that nearly 80 million people visited a social network site at least once a month in 2008, which is an 11% increase from 2007, and estimates 52% of Internet users will be regular social network visitors in 2013.