7 Comments »
Facebook’s platform strategy reached a critical milestone in February, surpassing Yahoo! as the most engaging web company. Compete.com reported last week that Facebook “dethroned” Yahoo!, crowning Facebook as the Attention King of the Internet.
Compete.com, a web research company, keeps a close eye on engagement using “Monthly Attention” as a metric. As of February 2009, Facebook is the “Monthly Attention Leader”, commanding nearly 6% of all time spent online by Americans.
While Facebook leads in engagement, it still lags well behind Google and Yahoo! in overall audience. MySpace is the losing end of the trends in Compete.com’s numbers, showing a dramatic fall in its attention share since Facebook’s platform launched.
Compete.com Monthly Attention Leaders Chart
Monthly Attention measures the time spent on a site as a percentage of a user’s total time spent online.
Facebook Attention Trend - Positive
Facebook surged from fourth place to first place, rocketing past Yahoo!, MySpace and Google. This dramatic shift occurred in six months.
MySpace Attention Trend - Negative
MySpace fell from 13% to less than 2% of US users’ time online. This occured in the last year and a half. Facebook’s platform launched 1.5 years ago. Coincidence? I think not.
What does it mean to by the “Attention King”?
This means its official: Facebook is the best overall value on the Internet.
Facebook is Attention King of US
The Compete.com data is particularly notable because it measures US Internet use. US Internet users are the most valuable web demographic on the planet, from a company valuation perspective.
International markets are where most of the growth of the Internet is occurring. Facebook is capturing the lion’s share of social networking’s growth as new users come online in these regions.
Downplaying “International”
“Well, that’s mostly international” is a common refrain used to downplay the growth of Facebook.
MySpace, in particular, clings to its “US” monthly unique numbers as proof it is still more popular than Facebook.
“International” is also cited to dismiss the success of companies like Friendster (Asia) or Google’s Orkut (Latin America).
Facebook now removes all doubt about its global leadership. In gaining the US crown for attention, Facebook also stakes its claim on engagement - a next generation measure of web value.
Valuing Online Behavior
Facebook leads in engagement, while Google, Yahoo! and MySpace remain the clear leaders in more established measures of online success.
Engagement vs. Monthly Uniques
“Engagement” is a buzzword rising as fast as Facebook. Engagement is synonymous with “attention”.
- Engagement metrics help marketers adjust to the new reality of social networks.
- Engagement metrics help social networks sell advertising.
“Monthly uniques” refers to the number of people who come to your web site at least once a month. The number of monthly unique visitors is easy to plug into traditional media frameworks for measuring the “reach” of a TV show.
- Advertisers hear “how many users ‘tune into’ your web site” when you use this metric.
Google and Yahoo! lead Facebook 3 to 1 in monthly uniques. In all fairness, Facebook – the Attention King - barely cracks the Top 10 US web sites as measured by reach.
Here are the Top 10 US web companies, ranked by monthly uniques (excerpted from comScore’s Top 50 US Internet properties in January):
Attention King Will Rule Internet
Facebook’s strategy is emerging as the clear winner online.
Compete.com’s numbers confirm three trends:
- Facebook applications provide enough web utility that people live their online lives on Facebook, not the general Internet.
- Facebook enabled brands and other web companies to bring their experiences and services into where their audiences live, Facebook.
- Facebook has the best user experience (UX), and will attract more users than any other social network.
I believe that the company who achieves a critical mass of engagement will rule the web. Engagement = Attention. Facebook captures the most attention.
All hail King Facebook!
Great article. Want to add that from now FB will be able to sell branded ads to avertizer, take banner market share from big portals like Yahoo, AOL, MSN or MySpace.
Nick, awesome article. Will do a related post and reference this one. I’ve always called Facebook “the portal of life” and I am reading that between the lines here. You can find a date, a new employee, funding for a startup, etc., on Facebook; Ditto pix of the kids, beerball vids, etc. Multifaceted scope of engagement. To me, this rolls up to “kingship.”
Tan,
Do you think it will be about banners?
I agree the ad dollars will follow the eyeballs. This may start with a shift in banner market share.
Facebook’s opportunities lie in engagement media - perhaps next we will see success with IAB standard ad units in apps. That might be the most natural evolution for social media advertising.
Regardless, reaching this milestone is not going to hurt their sales pitch…
Thanks for the comment,
Will M
What is the relationship between Unique Visitors and the “175m Users” stat everyone is now talking about?
I wonder whether they also track positive vs. negative attention. Mostly it doesn’t matter for current advertising, but in the long run the absolute number doesn’t mean squat…
@Will M - banner is quick cash because advertizer ready to buy it, this cash help Facebook have more time to work-out their best model revenue.
Hmm, did everyone seem to miss through all that “Hail the New King of Engagement” nonsense that they fail to actually define HOW they are measuring engagement?! If by engagement metrics they mean they’ve managed to capture 6% of the time spent by Americans on the web last month, congratulations. It seems facebook-stalking your ex was a popular activity in the month of love. But please let’s be honest, are people there to interact with a brand message or just simply update their status? Are they there to be “engaged” by a banner or just kill time by combing through the latest picture updates from the previous weekend? Raise your hand if you or anyone you know finds banners engaging. So is taking banner share is really something to brag about? How exactly is that engaging? Clarification – how exactly is any of this good news for FB? They have yet to figure out how to properly monetize that site, and my guess is they never will. This is not a brand-friendly site.