Opera's latest State of the Mobile Web examined social networks. In
this month's report, Opera reviewed the top social networks in
key countries.
Globally the top 10 social networks for Opera Mini users are (ranked by unique users):
1. vkontakte.ru - 909.17% growth in 2008
2. facebook.com - 693.11% growth in 2008
3. friendster.com - 670.13% growth in 2008
4. orkut.com - 296.78% growth in 2008
5. odnoklassniki.ru - 545.40% growth in 2008
6. peperonity.com - 396.65% growth in 2008
7. hi5.com - 372.60% growth in 2008
8. myspace.com - 618.42% growth in 2008
9. mamba.ru - 1055.51% growth in 2008
10. mocospace.com - 834.89% growth in 2008
In the United States, Facebook edged out MySpace thanks to an
impressive growth rate during the year, with unique users growing
1632%, while MySpace user growth was almost 52%.
Facebook continued its impressive performance in English-speaking
countries. In the United Kingdom, Facebook gained 536% to become the
most visited social network for Opera Mini users. South Africa also had
Facebook as its top social network. Outside of the anglophone world,
Facebook had impressive performance in Egypt as usage jumped more than
3400%.
All was not lost for MySpace, however. In Germany, MySpace was the strongest of all the social networks, growing 492% in 2008.
Just as on the wired Web, Orkut was the most popular in India and
Brazil, while Nasza-klasa was the most popular in Poland. This further
underscores Opera's belief that there is only One Web, which is
accessed through a variety of devices.
Supporting quotes
"Social networks are helping drive sustained growth of One Web,"
said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. "Despite prevailing economic
conditions, we expect the use of the Web through mobile devices will
continue to grow in 2009. More people want access to the Web on a
global scale. With extra capacity in both developed and developing
nations, we expect to see more people come online using a mobile phone
than any other device."
Other stats noted in the report were:
- Opera Mini users viewed more than
than 6.4 billion pages in December. Since November, page views have
gone up 13.0%.Opera Mini users generated more than 93.8 million MB of data for
operators worldwide. - Since November, the data consumed went up by
13.2%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed 90% on average. If this data
were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 938 million
MB of data in December.