QuasiPreneur.comThe Score: The Value of Facebook.com
The Score: The Value of Facebook.com
As Facebook’s founder negotiates a selling price for the social networking site, comScore examines its usage and audience.
Facebook.com
founder Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly in negotiations to sell the
company for $1 billion– certainly a hefty price tag considering that
competitor MySpace.com sold for a "mere" $580 million just last year
despite having nearly four times as much site traffic. However,
Facebook.com has fared well in the social networking space,
demonstrating consistent growth in its user base over the past few
years. The site’s appeal among certain desirable demographics also
underscores its potential for revenue generation via online advertising
- U.S. visitation to Facebook.com has trended consistently upwards
during the past 15 months. Since May 2005, Facebook.com has nearly
doubled in monthly visitation, reaching its highest domestic total in
August 2006 with 14.7 million visitors. - A demographic profile of visitors to Facebook.com reveals strong
skews toward users 18- to 24-years-old, which is not surprising
considering the site was initially open only to college students.
Although Facebook.com is now accepting users of all ages, those 18 to
24 are three times as likely as the average internet user to visit the
site. Teens, ages 12 to 17, who are 46 percent more likely than average
to visit, are the only other demographic to exhibit above-average
visitation. - Visitation also generally skews towards higher income households.
People in households with at least $100,000 in annual income are 33
percent more likely than average to visit Facebook.com. However, the
high composition of students is reflected in an index slightly higher
than average among those earning less than $25,000 annually (index =
104). - Facebook.com visitors are more likely to come from central regions
and less likely to come from western regions. Specifically, visitation
skews most towards the West North Central region (index = 162) and East
South Central region (index = 156), while those from the Mountain
(index = 48) and Pacific (index = 48) regions exhibited low relative
visitation.
| Demographic Profile Visitors to Facebook.com August 2006 Total U.S. – Home, Work, and University Locations |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Source: comScore Media Metrix |
