You intuitively knew this already, but it's nice to have the stats to back it up:

Consumers passionate about certain issues are much more likely than typical consumers to create and share content online about their passions and the brands associated with them

Read on.

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One month earlier than predicted, Facebook has overtaken MySpace, with more UK unique users in August (6.5 million) than MySpace (6.4 million). As Revolution points out, both are now visited by one in every five Britons online:

“Some have theorised the future of social networking will revolve around specific interest-groups as opposed to the general behemoths that dominate today. The fact that a number of the fastest-growing networks concern specific interest areas, such as business (LinkedIn), travel (WAYN) or music (Imeem), seems to add credibility to this theory,” said Alexander Burmaster, European Internet Analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.

In terms of social network engagement, Britons spent the most time on Facebook most total (991 million minutes) followed by Bebo (600 million minutes) and MySpace (540 million minutes). Virtual world Second life is the leading social network in terms of monthly time per visitor (5 hours 29 minutes) followed by teen community Habbo (3 hrs 6 mins) and Tagged.com (2 hrs 40 mins).

The social networking boom shows no signs of slowing – almost half (48 per cent) of Britons online (15.3 million people) visited at least one of the ten most popular social networks in August 2007.

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As if from the very pages of the Long Tail itself, comes this little snippet:

On 25 May, 7.7m people in the UK tuned in to watch Doctor Who on BBC One. On the same day, 9.8m people in the UK visited a website owned by Google, of which 2.2m watched at least one video on YouTube.

This time the Dr emerged victorious, but what will happen next time? Read on…

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Just watch. An update of the version you probably saw back in February.

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A handy chart to stick into your presentations.

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Since the release of Facebook Platform, everyone's being going nuts about Facebook apps. However, there's not been much more than conjecture about what it all means, and little other than the developers site to help you out when building your own. Today we fill that gap.

First, news of the effects on web traffic having a successful app can bring:

• Slide has seen its global reach triple, while daily global unique visitors have grown from 753,000 to more than 2.3m, an increase of 207%.
• HotorNot has doubled its global reach, boosting daily traffic by 152%, from 289,000 to more than 722,000.
• RockYou has also tripled its reach, and daily visitor numbers have risen by 339%, from 286,000 to more than 1.3m.

Secondly, a detailed analysis of the Facebook Platform from a functionality perspective (well worth a read in full), which reveals the implications of the above:

This is a "success kills" scenario – the good news is you're successful, the bad news is you're flat on your back from what amounts to a self-inflicted denial of service attack, unless you have the money and time and knowledge to tackle the resulting scale challenges.

Thirdly, and perhaps inevitably, some tips on how you can make your app stand out by using what's been dubbed NFO (News Feed Optimization):

Optimizing your product’s News Feed items is the single most important thing you can do as a marketer on Facebook. Not only should Feed items be designed for optimal conversion, but they should also be invoked by your application in ways that will maximize their distribution.

And Fourthly, comes news of the London Facebook Developers group:

I thought it would be useful to get the Facebook developers all together in a room, have a beer and share some ideas about Facebook. We plan to have a get-together once a month to share the knowledge

Which should coming in handy if you're looking for help or for someone to develop your app for you…

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This is the chart we've been waiting for. Note how both Bebo's and MySpace's traffic is falling while Facebook's grows ever faster – at this rate, Facebook will overtake MySpace by September, and then Bebo shortly after (which corresponds with the Nielsen//NetRatings data released last month). A thing of beauty. Heather Hopkins has more analysis, if you need it.

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As predicted (sort of), Facebook is beginning to heavily impact on MySpace's traffic. And remember that the majority of MySpace's traffic comes from people browsing other people's MySpace pages, without contributing. Everyone on Facebook has to have their own profile, and therefore will likely have a much higher participation rate.

The number of unique UK visitors to MySpace declined by 300,000 to 6.5m in May against the previous month, while Facebook gained 527,000 visitors over the same period, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Facebook attracted 3.2m unique UK visitors in the month and is expected to continue to grow in popularity as the site benefits from acres of free press coverage and word-of-mouth endorsement.

Bebo, the third-biggest social networking site and particularly popular with teenagers, has experienced steady growth since April, with an audience of 4m in May.

The trend is mirrored across the Atlantic, with MySpace suffering at the hands of a resurgent FaceBook in the US.

MySpace's unique US visitors declined by 450,000 to 56.6m in May, while Facebook's US audience has grown by a similar margin to 14.2m.

In the UK, Facebook has a greater reach that its US version, with 10% of the UK population logging onto the site, compared to 9% in the US.

But MySpace is more dominant than Facebook in the US, with an audience four times the size of its rival. In the UK, MySpace is only twice as big as Facebook.

Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, said: "MySpace is, by far, still the most popular social network. However, if last month's growth rates were to remain consistent, both Bebo and Facebook would catch MySpace in September this year.

"Meanwhile, MySpace does trail the other two when it comes to user engagement. Bebo leads the way, with its average visitor spending just over an hour and a half on the site — almost 10 more minutes than the average 'Facebooker' and almost a whole hour more than the average 'MySpacer'."

I bet Rupert is getting worried…

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I haven't written about Second Life since my last diatribe on the subject. However a couple of interesting bits of news have emerged recently that are worth noting.

Firstly some research looking at how long Second Life residents are spending interacting with advertisers in-world – not surprisingly, it's those that involve an element of community that are doing well (although GigaOm disputes whether any brands are actually doing well). Also comes news that over 1.3 million people logged into Second Life during March – an increase of 46% from January – 61% of them were European, compared to 19% from North America and 13% from Asia Pacific (and unsurprisingly, overall 61% were male).

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Britons spend the most time on line (34.4hrs a month) compared to the US and the rest of Europe (it would be good to have stats from Korea to compare this to). Go Mouse Potatoes!

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