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The team at Pingdom, a firm that focuses primarily on uptime and performance, has posted a new blog entry estimating that Facebook will overtake MySpace as the top social network in the U.S. within a month or two. That’s largely because, according to the same numbers, Facebook has doubled in size in the past year.

Several months ago, traffic firm ComScore noted that Facebook–a year ago far smaller than the News Corp.-owned MySpace–was starting to pass its rival in worldwide traffic. But in the U.S., which still has the big ad dollars, MySpace remained bigger.

There’s something to note, though: Pingdom used Google Trends to make its assessment. Google Trends traffic data is one of only many sources of statistics out there, and it’s collected primarily from people who have installed the Google toolbar. Numbers from Compete.com, for example, show that MySpace is still ahead.

Even according to Pingdom’s numbers, MySpace doesn’t appear to be shrinking. The performance firm thinks that could be due to a number of factors: that MySpace is continuing to recruit new users to replace those who may have left for Facebook, that people are using both social networks, or that Facebook is recruiting members who haven’t been prior users of either site.

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Pingdom: MySpace about to lose out to Facebook in U.S.

The good news for Facebook, according to new statistics from Hitwise, is that its traffic is up 50 percent in the U.S. since last August. The not-so-good news for Zuckerberg & pals? The same numbers say that News Corp.’s MySpace still owns a whopping 67.5 percent of the social-networking market in the U.S.

Hitwise gathered its data from an analysis of traffic to 56 different social-networking sites, and concluded that Facebook has gone from a market share of under 14 percent to slightly over 20 percent in the past year. MySpace, meanwhile, has seen a 10 percent decline in visits, which has pulled its share of the sector down from over 75 percent last year. These numbers, however, were tabulated well before this week’s launch of MySpace’s music service, which may well boost its traffic.

Behind Facebook and MySpace, Hitwise found that the third, fourth, and fifth most popular social networks in the U.S. are MyYearbook, Tagged, and the AOL-owned Bebo. None of them, however, have yet to bring in more than two percent of the U.S. market share.

Facebook vs. MySpace traffic comparisons are popular among data firms these days, with ComScore announcing in June that Facebook had passed MySpace in traffic for the first time. But much of Facebook’s growth is overseas, and everyone seems to be in agreement that MySpace is still the top social network in the U.S.

But Hitwise had some more news that might not be so good for either MySpace or Facebook: Visits to social networks overall were down 17 percent from August 2007 to August 2008.

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Hitwise: Facebook growing fast, MySpace still on top

Facebook has hit 100 million active users. No formal press release has been issued, so you’re going to have to believe the guy who built the site.

The news came straight from the source: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and several of his fellow executives put it in their status messages on the social network, and platform manager Dave Morin broadcast it in his Twitter feed. At least one of them referred to the number being “active users,” the statistic that Facebook prefers to use, rather than registered accounts overall.

While Facebook got its start at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. in 2004, most of this recent growth is coming from outside the U.S. Recently released statistics for July from traffic firm ComScore say that out of the approximately 145 million unique visitors coming to Facebook’s domain, under 40 million of them were from its home country.

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Facebook hits 100 million users

Recently, statistics firms haven’t been too kind to MySpace, the News Corp.-owned social network that was at the center of Silicon Valley press love not so long ago. In June, ComScore reported that once-smaller Facebook had surpassed it in worldwide traffic for the first time.

But the news isn’t all bad for MySpace, the company said in an e-mail Monday evening. ComScore statistics might be showing that Facebook is still growing rapidly, but the firm’s numbers for July said that MySpace has surpassed 122 million unique visitors worldwide for the first time. Granted, it’s been hovering between 100,000 and slightly over 120,000 for the past year, but that’s good to know it isn’t shrinking.

Unfortunately for MySpace, ComScore now pegs Facebook at over 144 million unique visitors worldwide.

Additionally, MySpace said, its Latin American traffic grew 10 percent month-over-month to 6.8 million, and Europe’s visitors hit 30 million for the first time. International traffic is up from 53 million to 55 million unique visitors. In the U.S., where it still has a significantly larger foothold than Facebook, MySpace hit 75 million unique visitors for the first time. According to the same ComScore stats, Facebook is slightly under 40 million in the U.S.

But MySpace has been trying to differentiate itself from the more directory-like “utility” Facebook of late, instead positioning itself as the heir apparent to MTV in pop-culture influence. It’s no surprise that founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson are on the cover of September’s Fast Company, spun as Hollywood moguls rather than dot-com entrepreneurs–their company will be launching MySpace Music, an ad-supported streaming music service, next month.

“As the stats from this month and previous months indicate, there’s large upwards momentum ready for the MySpace Music launch,” a release from the company declared.

That’s a big deal. Music is at the core of MySpace’s short history–it rose to fame as a promotional hub for indie bands–and that’s one market share that Facebook hasn’t been able to eat into.

Excerpted from:
MySpace in July: Best month ever?

Facebook is announcing later on Thursday a complete revamp of the analytics system it offers to developers for measuring the performance of their applications on its platform. It’s more extensive than the company’s recent decision to switch from publicly reporting daily use to monthly use.

It’ll be officially announced on the Facebook developer blog.

The new analytics are available only to the developer who created a given application, not to Facebook’s general membership of 90 million. They’ll be available under a “Features” tab in the application’s page, and will index “canvas page views, clicks on profile boxes, confirmation of Feed forms and the adding and removing of bookmarks” in a way that can be fitted into custom graphs. The update doesn’t change much for the developer experience, so it’s unlikely to be a controversial move. The average Facebook app creator will probably appreciate having the stats available.

In part, it’s a way to help developers transition to the newly redesigned Facebook profile pages, which some have criticized for making developer apps less visible by putting most of them on a separate “Boxes” tab. Others have applauded the slick new design for making the profile interface less cluttered.

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Facebook gives developers more detailed analytics