Fresh & New(er)

discussion of issues around digital media and museums by Seb Chan

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Time spent on Facebook

October 10th, 2007 by Seb Chan

Compete is one of several comparative ISP anayltic services that are doing some interesting tracking of how US internet users are behaving on particular sites and comparing them with competitors. One of their recent reports examines how users are behaving once they are on Facebook. We all know are spending time on Facebook, but what are the overall behaviour of other users?

What is interesting about their brief analysis, especially when combined with other available analysis of Facebook application popularity, is that the predominant behaviour is very unsurprisingly browsing friend profiles – with almost 4 times the amount of time spent and 50% more visitors than using the Group or even Facebook applications.

Tags: 2 Comments

  • http://www.ianfernando.com/2007/facebook-advances-all-about-getting-noticed/ ianternet

    a little complex image – but I think I do about most of what is stated within the blue bubbles

  • http://www.ivritype.com Ari Davidow

    To some degree the results reflect functionality on facebook. There is no comfortable way to monitor activity in groups (to see if there is something new to look at before visiting); even moreso this applies to discussions on groups. This is even more true of the discussion boards

    Facebook seems designed for accumulating “friends” and tracking what they do, as opposed to interacting with them. That one-step-removed interaction (tracking news rather than directly interacting) may be how people are most comfortable most of the time (we don’t necessarily have a lot to say to each other most of the day, but that doesn’t stop us from being interested in each other).