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Social networking site Facebook is fast becoming the place to be for 17-to-25-year-olds according to a recent quarterly survey by Youth Trends. Close to 70 percent of females ages 17-25 say Facebook is their first site of choice.

 MySpace trailed with 38 percent of females preferring the site and 22 percent favoring YouTube.

 "Although we heard some rumblings anecdotally and from some of our more hyper communicative panelists that Facebook reached a pinnacle," said Josh Weil of Youth Trends, "the results of this report say otherwise."

The Youth Trends survey is conducted quarterly and the previous quarter was the first time that Facebook was the most popular site with both men and women. Over half of the men surveyed (56%) preferred Facebook while YouTube was a distant second at 19 percent.

For the first time the survey found two blogs in the females top 10 list. Pink is the New Blog and What Would Tyler Durden Do? Both blogs focus on gossip and entertainment which Mr. Weil says “is consistent with Gen Y females' current adoration with content surrounding celebrities and their 'uh oh' moments."

Social networks are becoming more attractive to marketers and eMarketer believes that $865 million will be spent on social networks ads this year, primarily due to the success of MySpace.

 Last fall there was speculation that social networks traffic may be slowing. Facebook said their traffic had not slowed and they were working with comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings to improve measurement of the site.

 MySpace at the time said their site had experienced a slow down between August and September of 2006, but their growth resumed.

The long-term outlook for social networking site is positive in both popularity and the amount of time spent there. Young people account for the majority of users on MySpace, Facebook and other social networks.

 “The average 12- to 17-year-old spent 260 minutes on MySpace and viewed about 808 pages. By contrast, the average 35- to 54-year-old spent 179 minutes on the site and took in 560 pages," Ad Age reported in October (but did not cite the source of the data).

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