comScore: 2011 Global Social Network Report Focuses on User Interests Rather than Real Social Circles

Trends in unique user visits to Twitter, MySpace, Tumblr and Pinterest in the US market

December 31, 2011 comScore released its 2011 Social Network Report this month. One interesting point is that social networking sites that focus on user interests rather than real social circles have gained new developments. It is particularly noteworthy that Twitter and Tumblr have made breakthroughs in recent years, and Pinterest has also become one of them.

The growth of these sites has not affected Facebook. In areas where the number of users has reached saturation, Facebook's website traffic has only slowed down, not decreased. The real impact is MySpace. Some users who used MySpace to express themselves and follow celebrities have now turned to other sites.

Twitter is growing rapidly

Twitter has been the most notable. Twitter went mainstream and received a lot of media attention in early 2009. However, since then, Twitter's traffic in the United States has remained relatively stable, with monthly unique users remaining at 20 million to 25 million, according to data from third-party companies such as comScore.

Twitter's performance was still tepid at the beginning of this year. In April, Twitter's unique user visits were 24.5 million. However, from May to November, Twitter's unique user visits have grown to 35.5 million. Twitter's performance in the global market is also strong. In the past 12 months, the site's monthly global unique user visits have increased from 103 million to 167.9 million.

Some of this growth is due to Twitter's integration with Apple's iOS 5. Twitter has said that the iOS 5 integration led to a 25 percent increase in user registrations. However, Twitter's iOS 5 integration only began in October, so it cannot explain Twitter's huge user growth this summer.

What's even more interesting is that Twitter has long claimed that third-party services undercount the site's traffic. For example, in September this year, Twitter announced that according to Google Analytics data, the site's global unique user visits have reached 400 million, up from 250 million at the beginning of this year. Many Twitter users do not post messages or even register. Twitter also announced at the time that the site has 100 million active users.

The comScore data doesn't match Twitter's internal data, but the trends are similar: more people are reading Twitter messages than ever before. As a five-year-old company, Twitter seems to have moved past its shaky phase and is gradually being accepted by mainstream users.

MySpace Takes a Hit

Tumblr, which will celebrate its fifth birthday early next year, saw monthly unique U.S. visitors rise from 6.9 million to 15.9 million between November 2010 and November 2011. Globally, monthly unique Tumblr visitors rose from 18.6 million to 44 million.

As an interest-oriented social networking site, Pinterest has gradually attracted attention. Pinterest began to be built as early as 2008, but did not start to send out registration invitations until early 2010. This year, Pinterest has developed rapidly. According to comScore data, the number of global independent users visiting Pinterest was less than 1 million in May this year, but by November it had exceeded 6 million.

MySpace users may not have migrated directly to these new sites, but MySpace was undoubtedly affected. Globally, MySpace's monthly unique users fell from 81.5 million to 61 million from November 2010 to November 2011. In the United States, MySpace's decline was even faster, with monthly unique users falling from 54.4 million to 25 million.

Based on the above data, we can find that 2011 is a landmark year for the rapid development of public self-expression and sharing. The old-fashioned personal pages provided by MySpace are no longer popular, and users are more likely to share content through Tumblr topics, Twitter's 140-character messages, and Pinterest interest panels.

There are early signs that Facebook's new public sharing features are gaining acceptance, and 2011 may be just the beginning of a new era in which Internet users are willing to share anything they find interesting publicly and follow the most interesting people, not just those they know in real life.