Social Networks Losing Steam

The average length of time users spend on all of the top three sites is on the slide. Bebo, MySpace and Facebook all took double-digit percentage hits in the last months of 2007. December could perhaps be forgiven as a seasonal blip when people see their real friends and family, but the trend was already south.

The story year-on-year is even uglier for social networking advocates. Bebo and MySpace were both well down on the same period in 2006 - Murdoch's site by 24 per cent. Facebook meanwhile chalked up a rise, although way off its mid-2007 hype peak when you couldn't move for zeitgeist-chasing "where's the Facebook angle?" stories in the press and on TV.

You can survey the full numerical horror for youself here at Creative Capital.

That "user engagement" is dropping off (page impression growth is merely slowing) should be of particular concern for the sales people struggling to turn these free services into profit-making businesses. In the age of tabbed browsing, how long people stick around is particularly key for "interactive" sites, where people aren't attracted by useful information, but by time-wasting opportunities.

"Once social networking users have collected the people they value into their friends list, the service has to give them a reason to keep logging in. Right now, generalist social networks like Facebook and MySpace are competing for stickiness by accreting features and applications and encouraging users to share and store videos, photos, and other user-generated content."

Take Second Life. The online virtual world enjoyed acres of column inches last year, with hoardes of companies creating a virtual presence on the site - the clothing company American Apparel has a retail outlet there, and Reuters has a news bureau within Second Life to report on events in the virtual universe.