Inside Facebook

Web metrics firm Hitwise today released new data on US social networking traffic that shows Facebook increasing in both market share of visits and average time spent compared to this time last year, VentureBeat reports.

Here’s the data:

• Facebook’s share of social networking visits increased by 50% from 14% to 21% of the pie over the last year. MySpace continues to dominate with 67% of all social networking visits, though that lead is slipping - it had 75% of all visits last year. Younger social network myYearbook trails a distant third with 1.65%
• Facebook’s average time spent increased by 23% since this time last year, from just under 16 minutes to 19.5 minutes. However, MySpace is also showing bigger numbers in this category, with average time spent slightly down to 30.5 minutes.

We’ll be tracking the numbers to see how Facebook’s redesign changes things over the coming months. Will the streamlined redesign make it harder for users to spend a lot of time wandering around, or will the increased emphasis on personal feeds lead users to interact more with each other?