As Facebook has grown, many of its competitors have shrunk or disappeared. MySpace, owned by News Corp, was once the poster child of social networking. However, Facebook raced past it in 2008. MySpace currently has around 65 million unique users. Another competitor, Bebo, has also faced difficulty. In June this year its owner, AOL, sold the site just two years after it bought it for $850m (£417m). The company said it was unable to provide the "significant investment" Bebo needed to compete with its social networking rivals.
One site that appears to be growing alongside Facebook is Twitter. Measurements of Twitter traffic are notoriously difficult as many users do not interact with the service through the website. Instead, they use desktop software and mobile phones. However, it is estimated to be approaching 200m users.
(BBC, July 2010)
