According to research firm ComScore Media Metrix, tracking Internet traffic, MySpace’s audience has increased just slightly over the past year, from 105 million in April 2007 to 115.7 million in April 2008. On the other hand, Facebook has fast surged ahead, almost doubling its unique visitors’ base. News Corp. is the owner of MySpace that was pushed to second place by Facebook. Facebook boasts 116.4 million users worldwide. However, the networking biggies are facing stiff competition.

Other websites, too, have grown much more rapidly than MySpace, especially outside the US. Some of these networking sites have managed to generate sizable audiences, even though they are hardly known globally. Hi5, for example, is very popular in Latin America and is ranked fourth in the world. It has around 45 million users. With nearly 25 million users worldwide, Bebo is more popular in the UK than MySpace. AOL recently acquired Bebo for $850 million.

Facebook has definitely played a role in widening the audience base for online social networks. However, it has rather struggled in selling advertising, and garners below 20 per cent of total worldwide spending on online social networks, a figure that pales in comparison to MySpace’s 50 per cent share. Of course, even MySpace has also not succeeded so much in monetising its user base in terms of advertising.