Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon are the most preferred Social Networking Sites, Google+ fails to Attract

Facebook the most visited social networking site of the world, may cross the historic 1 Billion mark by August this year. Currently its subscriber count is 900+ million users.

Facebook growth has accelerated with the surge in new members from countries like India and Brazil. Earlier orkut dominated these markets. It was earlier believed that facebook was growing at exponential rate (Looking at the data from 2006 to 2008), but the more recent data (from 2009) suggests that the growth is ‘Linear’. Facebook growth has stopped or slowed in many of its adopting markets like US and UK. But there is a strong push from developing markets. It claims that in a given day at least half of its registered members log-in to their accounts.

The launch of Google+ brought a new competition to facebook. But it failed to attract users. Even with Google integrating its services, its user base is just over 170 million.

Pinterest is something that is coming up good. It has a very simple concept, just post what you have interest in and follow people who interest you. User can share pictures of their work and discuss what other users are doing. It has total user base of 13 million.

Stumble Upon is new discovery engine that helps users find content online, eg Blogs. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social Networking. It has currently 25 million+ user base.

Since last September, facebook has stopped publishing blogs etc. but instead they have introduced tools and apps; to share music, blogs and videos. But in terms of micro blogging, nothing can compete with twitter.


facebook's public offer which might come in first week of June 2012 is the most looked upon event on wall street this year. It was earlier expected that with the latest IPO company will be valued at $80 Billion.