Never forget the classic mantra of the social media world: out with the old, in with the new.
Twitter has overthrown MySpace from its number three spot on the list of most visited social networking sites, according to new data from comScore Inc. Growing by 76% from a year before, the popular microblogging site saw nearly 96 million unique visitors in August, just enough to inch past the 95 million unique visitors to MySpace in the same period. The News Corp.-owned social site actually dipped 17% in visitors from a year before.
The new third-place titleholder registers 370,000 new accounts a day, according to Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner.
Only Facebook and Microsoft’s Windows Live Profile saw more unique visitors, reaching 598 milllion and 140 million respectively. (It’s debatable whether the latter should really be included on this list since it it’s more about the Web-based email client than the social aspect.) Facebook surpassed MySpace in early 2008 and shows absolutely no signs of giving up its seat at the top anytime soon.
In the past year, MySpace has been working on the double to bring its aging social network up to speed. Last December, the site not only hopped on the real-time bandwagon by launching a suite of APIs but also finalized its acquisition and integration of social media music service imeem, further bolstering MySpace Music.
More recently, MySpace has relaunched with a whole new site design intended to play more to the site’s strong points: music and games.
“Any comparisons between MySpace and other Internet services are irrelevant as MySpace’s mix of offerings is uniquely different and specifically focused on audiences under the age of 35,” said Rosabel Tao, a MySpace spokeswoman, in a statement.
Twitter too is in the midst of rolling out an elegant and efficient redesign that could attract more visitors. It’s important to note that comScore’s data does not take into account users who only access Twitter via third-party applications like TweetDeck.
image source: technorati.com
