Facebook nearing saturation point in the UK

The many security and privacy concerns voiced by users do not seem to be affecting Facebook

Facebook use in the UK seems to have hit its peak, despite the company announcing record global figures last month.

Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise, has been studying Facebook's numbers and visits, and found that the site has shown signs of exhausting its potential UK user base.

Facebook announced recently that it has 500 million users worldwide. Some 26 million of these users are in the UK and, according to the Hitwise numbers, these people spend a great deal of time on its pages. This, however, may change.

Goad said in a blog post that Facebook is the second most visited web site in the UK, and took over seven per cent of all internet visits in July. The site trailed behind Google with 9.59 per cent share, but still took up 54 per cent of all social networking sessions.

Looking at its page views gives the social networking site another leap in user stats, according to Hitwise figures, and indeed, it found that in July one in every six internet pages viewed by UK users was a Facebook page.

So, with all this growth, where does the slowdown begin? Goad said that, although Facebook's market share had trebled since 2005, it had recently begun to show signs of a slowdown.