Contact: Matt Tatham - Hitwise – 1.212.380.2939

MySpace Received 76 Percent of U.S Social Networking Visits in 2007

Facebook traffic increased 50 percent year-over-year;

95 percent of traffic to MySpace.com was returning in December 2007

NEW YORK, NY – January 16, 2008 – Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, today announced that MySpace.com averaged 76.35 percent of all U.S. visits in 2007 [1] among a custom category of 53 leading social networking websites. Facebook.com, Bebo.com and BlackPlanet.com received the next largest number of visits, as each received 12.57, 1.24 and .87 percent, respectively. The remaining 49 social networking websites in the custom category accounted for 8.97 percent of U.S. visits. 

For December 2007, MySpace.com received 72 percent of U.S. visits among the social networking category. Facebook.com received 12.57 percent of visits and Bebo.com received 1.09 percent of visits. U.S. traffic to all the social networking websites increased four percent year-over-year. MyYearbook experienced the largest gain in market share in December 2007, increasing 407 percent compared to December of the previous year. Facebook and Club Penguin followed, increasing 51 and 48 percent, respectively.

“MySpace and Facebook remain the market leaders among social networking websites, retaining a loyal base of users,” said Heather Dougherty, director of research, Hitwise. “The continued popularity of social networking activities online will drive the interest of marketers seeking to target influential users to approve and advocate their products and services.”

In December 2007, MySpace received 95 percent of its share of traffic from returning visitors. Among the top five social networking websites by market share, Facebook and BlackPlanet.com followed with 93 and 89 percent, respectively, of traffic returning from the previous month.

In December 2007, the average time spent on Bebo led among the top five social networking websites with users spending an average of 30 minutes and 24 seconds on the website. Facebook experienced the largest growth in average time spent, increasing 100 percent in December 2007 to 19 minutes and 51 seconds from just under 10 minutes as compared to the same month in 2006.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.