Facebook reaches saturation in the UK, suggests research

Facebook’s growth in the UK has slowed significantly in the last six months, according to research by Experian Hitwise.

It found that Facebook’s share of page views and time spent on the site had slowed over the past six months. Hitwise said that although Facebook’s audience has risen rapidly to 500m users globally, it could be a sign that the social network has reached saturation point in the UK.

Robin Goad, research director at Experian Hitwise UK, said, “Facebook has a very high average session time (almost half an hour) but this has stabilised over the last six months after increasing rapidly during the site’s ascendancy.

Clearly Facebook isn’t losing traffic in the UK, but do these stats do point to a levelling off? The rapid period of the site’s growth is probably over in the UK, but does that mean Facebook has reached saturation point?”

Hitwise revealed Facebook now accounts for 7.14% of all UK internet visits (Google has a 9.59% share) and accounts for 54.48% of all UK internet visits to social networks.

In terms of page views, Facebook has a significantly greater market share than other sites. In July it accounted for 16.73% of all UK page views – one in every six – while the second biggest site for page views, Google, only had a 9.22% share.

This story first appeared on newmediaage.co.uk