Report: Total Minutes Spent on Facebook Rose 700% in Year

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 3, 2009 - 9:13am.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Total minutes spent on Facebook rose nearly 700% in April over the prior year, while minutes spent on its chief rival, MySpace, actually decreased 31%, according to new figures from Nielsen Online.

Time spent on Facebook grew from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion this April.

Meanwhile, minutes on MySpace fell to just under 5 million.

"We have seen some major growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace," said Jon Gibs, Nielsen Online's vice president of online media and agency insights.

"The one thing that is clear about social networking is that regardless of how fast a site is growing or how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers."

One area that Facebook trails MySpace in is online video views. MySpace users watched an average of 40 minutes of video each during April, compared to 11 minutes per Facebook user.

The report comes a week after Facebook received a $200 million investment from Eastern European financing group Digital Sky Technologies (DST) in a deal that values the company at $10 billion.

Related Links:
http://www.nielsen-online.com/pr/pr_090602.pdf (PDF)