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Quick, what’s the fastest-growing social network over the last year?

MySpace? Nope. Facebook? Nope. Bebo? Now, let’s be serious. According to Nielsen Online (and Fortune), it’s . . . LinkedIn.

Yep, the all-business-no-fun-actually-used-for-networking-instead-of-popularity -contests social network is the fastest growing social network out there. Of course, that’s in large part due to the fact that it’s also quite small.

Compare these stats:

Source: Nielsen Online

versus these:

Source: Nielsen Online

So while LinkedIn has the best growth rate, it’s still pretty small when compared to Facebook and MySpace. Growing at a faster rate means adding more users relative to your current user base, and the bigger you are, the harder that is.

Perhaps even more impressive is the monthly data for the two giants: Fortune reports that Facebook’s “unique audience” growth trumps MySpace’s: Facebook added 1.5M new visitors in October, while MySpace added only 300,000. The YOY data shows that not only did Facebook grow at a faster rate than MySpace did, but it added more actual users (rather than just more users relative to its current user base): 125% growth rate (vs 19%) and 10.8M more “unique audience” members (vs 9.3M).

Despite the fact that we’re all getting tired of hearing about Facebook and its phenomenal growth, it looks like the social network is still growing quickly with lots more room to grow—unlike its larger competitor.

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