StumbleUpon pushes MySpace out of UK social networking top 10

It may have been the website that sucked many music lovers into social networking, but MySpace has dropped out of the UK top 10 of popular social network sites for the first time.

In the latest Experian Hitwise figures, it was replaced in the top 10 by StumbleUpon. Facebook still rules the roost, with YouTube second and Twitter third.

MySpace was launched in 2003 and quickly gained popularity, being bought by News Corporation in 2005. From then until 2008 it was the most visited website in the world, until it was overtaken by Facebook.

As it continued to slide down the web rankings, MySpace was bought by Justin Timberlake earlier this year for $35 million – a little less than the $580 million News Corporation had spent on it five years earlier.

The reasons for MySpace’s demise have been well discussed, with a lack of new features (in the face of Facebook) being the most common reason cited. However, slow loading time and allowing over customisation by users were also factors.

The sites currently making up the rest of the top 10 social networking sites in the UK from fourth to ninth, pop pickers) are: Yahoo Answers; Gumtree; Linkedin; Tumblr; Money Saving Expert, and Moshi Monster.

It would appear difficult for MySpace to fight its way back from this position, especially as music – its mainstay for early popularity – is so prevalent and easily accessible on the internet.

That said, to put the news into some context, numbers in the great scheme of things are minimal. While Facebook enjoyed more than a 50 per cent share of visits to social networking sites in November 2011, and YouTube almost 25 per cent, the StumbleUpon/Myspace battle was between 0.36 and 0.31 per cent of the traffic – a sad demise for the former king of the web.