WebProNews

Nielsen Online has released some new numbers concerning social networks, and things aren't looking too great for MySpace.  While the News Corp property is still ahead of Facebook in terms of unique audiences and the length of users' sessions, the one stat has leveled off and the other has fallen.

MySpace received just 2 percent more visitors in August 2008 than it did during August 2007, according to Nielsen.  Its time per person measurement dropped by 24 percent in the same period.  And all of this occurred even though MySpace unveiled a new design and tried to match Facebook's focus on applications.

 MySpace Still Holding Onto Old Success
(Photo Credit: Nielsen Online)

Facebook, meanwhile, is catching up in both departments, posting gains of 100 and 57 percent, respectively.  Third-through-sixth-place Classmates Online, LinkedIn, Windows Live Spaces, and Reunion.com all matched or beat MySpace in terms of unique audience and time per person increases, too.

Lower down on the list, Tagged.com, a social network originally for high schoolers, distinguished itself by growing 352 and 132 percent in the two categories.  This put it in ninth place.  Twitter wound up in seventeenth place, but also scored a nice unique audience gain of 419 percent.

Even as Rupert Murdoch's surely banging some execs' heads together, a big hat tip goes to Adam Ostrow.