MySpace 'passes 10m UK users'

MySpace 'passes 10m UK users'

Gorillaz has one of the most popular MySpace pages
Social network MySpace has said more than 10m UK users look at its website each month, making it the most popular social network in the country.
The most popular page on MySpace UK is for Aids charity Project RED, with more than 627,000 "friends".

Independent net monitoring firm Nielsen/Net Ratings said MySpace had 6.5m unique UK visitors in May 2007.

Nielsen said rivals Bebo had 3.96m unique visitors in the same month, while Facebook had 3.2m.

MySpace launched its localised UK site in April 2006 and since then has almost tripled the number of users, the website said.

Figures released by the site show that more than 1.8m people on MySpace said London was their hometown, while more than 721,000 said Manchester and 589,000 said Birmingham.

Damon Albarn's virtual band Gorillaz is the second-most popular page, followed by Welsh band, Bullet for my Valentine.

"The fact the UK's top three MySpace profiles are a charitable campaign, a major pop group and an indie rock band shows the diversity of the MySpace community," said Jamie Kantrowitz, senior vice president marketing and content, MySpace Europe.

Last month Nielsen predicted that Facebook and Bebo could both catch MySpace by September this year, if their growth in new users continued.

The firm's figures showed that MySpace was proving much less compulsive for its users than the other two sites.

Its users spent an average of 96 minutes on the site in May, while Bebo users were there for 152 minutes and "Facebookers" spent 143 minutes on their site.