YouTube most popular networking site

Jemima Kiss, guardian.co.uk 5 Mar 08;

YouTube is now the most popular social networking website in the UK, overtaking the user-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia with 10.4 million unique users during January.

The Google-owned video-sharing site saw a 56% increase in traffic from January the previous year, cementing the popularity of online video among web users, according to newly released Nielsen Online figures.

Nielsen Online estimates that nearly two-thirds of UK web users - or 20.8 million people - visited at least one of the top 10 social networking sites.

Wikipedia had 9.6 million unique users during January, while Facebook recorded 8.5 million.

Blogger, the DIY blogging service also owned by Google, had 5.1 million users, ahead of social networking sites MySpace, at 5.02 million and Bebo at 4.09 million users.

Facebook saw by far the biggest year-on-year growth, of 712% since January 2007; and Slide, the photo display application, saw its user base increase by 207% to 3.3 million over the same period.

A closer look at the fastest-growing services showed video tools accounting for five of the top 10 names, with brands including Veoh, Video Jug and Tudou all showing triple-figure growth.

"The fact that almost two-thirds of Britons online visited at least one of the top social media sites shows it isn't a niche part of the internet but is now the backbone supporting its growth," said Alex Burmaster, Nielsen Online's web analyst.

"Whilst the majority of the most popular social media sites are the networks, most of the fastest growing are video sites, which points to video being the biggest star of the 2008 social media scene."

Perfspot, the Arizona-based social network, topped the list of rising UK social media stars with growth narrowly ahead - year on year from January last year - of Facebook at 713%, although the site still had just 260,000 UK users as of January.

Nielsen Online measures data by using a panel of web users on connections at home and work locations, but does not include education or public web access, such as web cafes.