Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

There has been a lot of controversy as to whether or not social networking sites can be effective recruiting tools. Part of the argument, aside from the fact that social networking can focus too much on social relationships and not enough on professional networking, is that not enough people visit these sites to make them valid recruiting mechanisms. However, one of these sites is now the fourth-largest site in the world.

During June, Facebook gained 24 million unique visitors for a total of 340 million unique visitors throughout the world. A recent report from ComScore found that increase made the social networking site the fourth-largest in the world, only behind Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

While Facebook only officially acknowledges that it has 250 million active registered users, you don’t have to be registered to visit some of the site’s pages, accounting for the excess unique users. During the last year, Facebook has grown by 157 percent, adding 208 million visitors.

The top 10 sites and the number of unique visitors are as follows:

• Google Sites – 844 million
• Microsoft Sites – 691 million
• Yahoo! Sites – 581 million
• Facebook – 340 million
• Wikimedia Foundation sites – 303 million
• AOL – 280 million
• eBay – 233 million
• CBS Interactive – 186 million
• Amazon – 183 million
• Ask Network – 174 million

During June, Facebook had 77 million unique users in the United States, making it the sixth-largest site in America, behind Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Fox Interactive Media sites.

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