Fall of an empire

Compete.com's November statistics find Facebook is rapidly closing the gap with US socnet leader MySpace.

Facebook blossomed to 49.4 million visitors between November 2007 and November 2008, a 69.5% growth trajectory for the year — 10% for the month alone. In contrast, MySpace hit 56.4 million visitors, representing 2.7% growth for the month — and negative 14.4% growth for the period between November 2007 and November 2008.

In January, Facebook joined the ranks of the top 10 sites in the United Kingdom, displacing Fox Interactive (which includes MySpace).

In addition to international growth, it continues to seize territory in the US. "The company has approximately 45 million registered users" whose profile are based in the US, according to Facebook's ad platform statistics (via All Facebook). "Facebook is attracting an additional 5 million users just through search engine traffic."

If Facebook maintains its current growth pace, it will likely displace MySpace as the top US social network within weeks.

Last week Facebook launched Facebook Connect, which enables registered users to access services from other sites, including Hulu and Digg, without separate logins. In a handful of days, Google immediately released a parallel offering.

The search giant's jealousy isn't the only demonstration of Facebook's merit. Despite the growing chill in the online ad market, its engagement-based ad models retain the ongoing interest of adventurous marketers, including The New York Times.

Hoping to keep up, MySpace redesigned its site with better ad conversions in mind. The new look attracted advertisers like Cartier and Batman film The Dark Knight. In October, it launched a self-serve ad program.