Facebook Rises to Snatch the Fourth Largest Website in the World Slot
The global rise of Facebook is nothing less than astounding. In the month of June alone it gained 24 million unique visitors worldwide, compared to the month before, for a total of 340 million unique visitors worldwide. It is now the fourth largest site in the world, trailing only Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo sites, according to comScore (see table below). Facebook itself only officially acknowledges 250 million active registered users (but you don’t have to be a registered user to visit some Facebook pages).
In the past year, it has grown 157 percent, gaining 208 million visitors. It long ago passed its rival MySpace on a global basis, way back in April, 2008. Since then, it has passing even bigger sites on its way up. In the chart above, the blue line is Facebook. It passed Amazon back in August, 2008. eBay fell by the wayside in January, 2009. It surged past AOL sometime in February, 2009, and just last month it finally passed the Wikimedia Foundation sites (which includes Wikipedia).
So there it stands at No. 4. It will be a while, if ever, before it catches up to the three world leaders: Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. They each have between 240 million and 500 million more monthly global unique visitors than Facebook (see chart below). But it’s always good for a company to have stretch goals.
Worldwide unique visitors (June, 2009).
1. Google Sites: 844 million
2. Microsoft Sites: 691 million
3. Yahoo! Sites: 581 million
4. Facebook: 340 million
5. Wikimedia Foundation sites: 303 million
6. AOL: 280 million
7. eBay: 233 million
8. CBS Interactive: 186 million
9. Amazon: 183 million
10. Ask Network: 174 million
In the U.S., Facebook had 77 million unique visitors in the month of June, making it the sixth largest site in the U.S. (after Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and all Fox Interactive Media sites combined).
Long on Face, Short on Book – My Experience with Facebook and Why I Quit:
http://maximumfiction.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/long-on-face-short-on-book/
Twitter will rule them all!
I agree, I think Twitter has more substantial value that Facebook, but that is just my opinion.
I confess that I hadn’t realized Microsoft got so many hits. Bing certainly doesn’t do that all on its own. Does that number include help sights and automated pings to the Microsoft website to check for updates? What about the Internet Explorer home page(s)? If it includes automated hits then I’ll understand, otherwise it feels like a stretch.
I am pretty sure that it includes all visits on all their affiliated sites, pings and/or automated or not. I am not sure about the Windows Update though. Great point!
That’s amazing, not as wil as these faqstho… http://FaqsNews.com
twitter will prevail with regards value content – sure MySpace and face for the kiddies [sorry but its true] but what *VALUE*material/news content comes from social networking sites that are more about cyberbullying teens and gen y’ers etc etc…
I totally agree.
There might be something wrong here. I read an article that stated Facebook was “in it last leg.” Lots of visitors? Yes, but perhaps it is the maximum it will ever get. The article also talked about the effect oh Twitter being even more popular and powerful (?) than Facebook. In my opinion, these “popular” sites will eventually lose most of their users. For now, it is the “schnitzel” and it is good for business.
I agree with you.
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is facebook ruining your love life?!
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Social networking has allready shown that it’s a great model for innovative business. Give people a chance to talk and flout their ego’s and the worlds your golden oyster. God knows what it will look like in 10 years time.
But I beg the question, do we really need it, while half the world still struggles finding shelter and enough to eat ? If we could divert these resources to generating real equality, now that would be worth writing home about!