UKOM/Nielsen reports that for the first time ever Facebook surpassed Microsoft to become the second-most popular website in the UK. They grew 7 percent compared to a year earlier to 26.8 million visitors in Britain in May.

With that Microsoft falls back to the number three spot. MSN/WindowsLive/Bing sites combined were still good for 26.2 million visits from Brits. Google is still leading the dance with 33.9 million. Nielsen came to these numbers by looking at their panel of 50.000 people.

Nielsen says the growth has much to do with people over the age of 50 moving on to the Social Network. That growth can also be seen on Twitter. There the number of visits rose to 6.1 million. Many of those were women pensioners. Funny enough that rise was mostly because they wanted to know more about “Giggsgate”, a celebrity scandal.

UKOM general manager James Smythe said:

“The growth in audiences to these social networks is now primarily being driven by the 50-plus age group. Just a few years ago, this group may have found itself out of place on these sites,”

Other results from Nielsen’s research show:

* Business network LinkedIn registered 3.6 million UK visitors in May, up 57 percent from a year earlier.

* Facebook attracted 140 million visitors in the United States, up 12 percent.

* In Spain Facebook went up with 7 percent, in France 18 percent, in Italy 26 percent and in Germany 72 percent.

* Twitter’s visitor numbers rose 22 percent in the United States, 48 percent in France, 58 percent in Italy and more than doubled in Spain.

* Germany seemed less Twitter minded: Twitter numbers fell by 11 percent

Posted in News, Research | Tags: Facebook, Google, Industry News, Numbers, Research, social, statistics, Twitter