Facebook Growth Explodes

The social networking site's traffic has doubled since opening registration to non-college students in September.

Traffic at the formerly exclusive social networking site Facebook has taken off in the months after its decision to open itself to the public. Since the site’s September 2006 decision to open registration, the number of unique visitors to the site has doubled according to comScore, a provider of Web demographics.

Prior to September, Facebook was the domain only of college students, due to a registration process that required a university-affiliated e-mail address. Despite vocal opposition from some existing users when registration went open, the site has managed to retain its collegiate audience and expand significantly. Growth among the college-age audience of 18-24 year-olds grew by a steady 38 percent since last year, demonstrating that college students did not desert Facebook, but in other demographics the change was much more dramatic. The number of visitors aged 12 to 17 jumped 149 percent, and among people aged 25 to 34 the change was 181 percent.

“Given its roots as a college networking site, Facebook has historically shown very strong skews toward the 18-24 year old age segment,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix, in a statement. “However, since the decision to open registration to everyone, the site has seen visitors from all age groups flood the site. As the overall visitation to Facebook continues to grow, the demographic composition of the site will likely more closely resemble that of the total Internet audience.”