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29 social networks that have at least one million visitors per day

Although Facebook is by far the largest social arrangement out there, the social arrangement sphere is large and has a ton of players. We were curious in this area which of them are the most active. To find these sites, we chose to focus on the number of daily visitors to each site.

The number of (unique) daily visitors is an fascinating metric since it doesn’t rely on registered users (who may or may not be active) or monthly visitors, where some may visit the site as seldom as once per month. In small, you get a excellent thought of the day-to-day activity on a site.

Number of visitors per day

We found 29 social networks that currently have one million or more unique visitors per day. For traffic data, we used Google Trends for Websites.

Note that these numbers are estimates made by Google from a variety of data sources, so they will not be 100% right, but should still give us a excellent thought of how the sites compare.

A few instant observations:

• Facebook has stated that in this area half of its users log in to the site every day, which seems to match these numbers.
• It’s fascinating that Orkut, counted out by many, clocks in a significant number of daily visitors. From this perspective, it’s the second-largest social arrangement in the world. This is in large part due to it’s extremely strong following in Brazil and to a somewhat lesser extent, India.
• How the mighty have fallen. MySpace is only number 12 on this list. (And speaking of the fallen, Friendster didn’t even make the list.)
• Facebook dominates to an nearly ridiculous extent. Combine all the daily visitors for the additional 28 social networks on this list and you still only end up with two-thirds of what Facebook has.

The social networks, one by one

For those of you interested in learning more in this area each arrangement, counting the trend of its traffic (some are on the rise, some are stable, some are losing ground), read on. We’ll go through all of them here not more than.

Facebook

Desires no initiation, really. As you could see in the chart above, the daily activity at the Facebook website makes all additional sites look small. It should be noted that in this area 200+ million of Facebook’s 600 million users also use one of Facebook’s mobile apps, which won’t show up here. Launched in 2004.

Still no sign of Facebook’s growth slowing down, is there?

Orkut

Google’s entry in the social arrangement field (not together with Google Buzz). Not huge in most of the world, but a massive success in Brazil and to a lesser extent, India. Launched in 2004.

Qzone

China’s largest social arrangement, launched by Tencent in 2005.

Chirrup

Another site that really desires no initiation, at least to the readers of this blog. It should be noted that these results may be a bit unfair to Chirrup since public to a large extent use applications to access Chirrup and don’t necessarily surf to the Chirrup.com website so much. Launched in 2006.

Odnoklassniki

A Russian social arrangement for classmates and ancient friends (“odnoklassniki” means “classmates”). Launched in 2006.

LinkedIn

A business-oriented social arrangement that you’re probably by now well aware of. Launched in 2003.

vKontakte

A well loved Russian social arrangement that is often described as a Russian Facebook clone. Launched in 2006.

Badoo

A social networking site that originated in Russia but is now most well loved in several Latin American countries, as well as France, Italy and Spain. Launched in 2006.

Mixi

Japan’s premier social arrangement and one of the oldest social networks on this list. Launched in 2000.

Flickr

Some may reckon of Flickr as just a photo-sharing site, but it’s always had a strong social element and is listed as a social arrangement in Wikipedia, so we included it here. Launched in 2004.

Hi5

A social arrangement with a global audience, although an extra large share of its users come from Thailand, Mexico, Romania and Peru. Launched in 2003.

Myspace

The former number one social arrangement is not faring so well at the moment, at least when you reckon in this area how successful it once was. Launched in 2003.

Nasza Klasa

A buff up social arrangement for students and ancient pupils (the name means “our class”). Launched in 2006.

If you’re wondering in this area the oddly shaped graph, it’s because the site switched to nk.pl from a different field name (explaining that sharp rise).

Tuenti

Another site that basically got its start as a local Facebook copy, this time in Spain. It’s often referred to as the “Spanish Facebook.” Launched in 2006.

Hyves

The most well loved social arrangement in the Netherlands. Launched in 2004.

Renren

Another well loved Chinese social arrangement. Renren literally means “everyone.” Launched in 2005 under the name Xiaonei.

The “late start” in the graph is because that’s when the site changed both its name and its field name.

Tagged

A social arrangement launched in 2004, somewhat infamous for rather spammy invitation email practices a couple of years ago.

Taringa!

An Argentinian social arrangement available in Spanish and Portuguese. Much of its traffic comes from Latin American countries and Spain. Launched in 2004.

Cyworld

A South Korea-based social arrangement mainly active in South Korea, but it also has operations in China and Vietnam. Launched in 1999.

Netlog

A social arrangement mainly targeted at European youth. Launched in 2003.

LiveJournal

One of the early social arrangement sites, started in the United States but nowadays based in Russia. Launched in 1999. (Geek factoid: the Memcached project started at LiveJournal.)

Kaixin001

Another Chinese social arrangement. Historically, it has received spikes in usage every time China has blocked access to sites like Facebook, Myspace, Chirrup and YouTube.

Wer-kennt-wen

A German social arrangement somewhat similar to Myspace. The name means “who-knows-whom.” Launched in 2006.

Sonico

A social arrangement aimed mainly at a Latin American audience. Launched in 2007.

Douban

A Chinese social arrangement where users discuss and review movies, books and music. Launched in 2005.

MeinVZ

StudiVZ is a German social networking site mainly for college and university students in Europe, similar to Facebook (really, in 2008, Facebook sued them for copying its look, feel and features). MeinVZ is an English-language version of this site aimed at non-students.

Skyrock

A French social arrangement. Launched in 2002 as a blogging service (Skyblog.com), it became a full-blown social arrangement in 2007.

deviantART

A social arrangement where artists can meet, discuss and showcase their work. Launched in 2000.

iWiW

Small for “International Who is Who,” iWiW is a Hungarian social arrangement. Launched in 2002 as WiW (i.e. the same moniker but without the “international” part).

Final words

Yes, there are as we all know some social networks that are heavily reliant on mobile apps, which won’t come across here. This assessment focused solely on website visitors.

If nothing else, this assessment clearly shows that although Facebook is dominant, it’s far from the only game in social networking town.

Photo credit: Crowd photo by Anirudh Koul (we had to crop it a bit, sorry).

Data sources: Wikipedia and Google Trends for Websites.

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29 social networks that have at least one million visitors per day