Facebook set to take largest market share

10/06/2008

Facebook is set to take MSN Messenger's crown as the UK's most popular online application, according to Nielsen Online.

Nielsen estimates that in April 2008, the UK population spent around 2.4 billion minutes on Facebook, compared to only 500 million minutes in the same month in 2007.

Over the same period of time, the number of minutes UK users spent on MSN/Windows Live Messenger fell from 3.2 billion to 2.4 billion.

According to the research, social networking now accounts for a total of 3.7 billion minutes per month, compared to instant messaging's 2.9 billion, a dramatic turnaround considering only last year instant messaging totalled 3.9 billion minutes.

Nielsen Online internet analyst Alex Burmaster said it shows things are changing.

"This has been a seismic shift in a relatively short space of time and illustrates how social networks have fundamentally altered the way people communicate online," he said.

"It will be interesting to see what further effects Facebook's IM (instant messaging) application will have on the current players in the space."

The data also shows a four per cent increase in the time the UK population spent online.

Online auction site eBay is third most popular, while Google search and YouTube came fourth and fifth respectively.