While Facebook has seemed like king of the social networking sites for a while now, boasting the greatest number of new sign-ups, it's been engaged in a long game of catch-up with MySpace, one that finally looks like it may win in the coming year. The past year has seen a steady increase in the number of U.S. internet users connecting to Facebook, while MySpace's visitor counts remain more or less stagnant. The latest numbers show around 55 million U.S. visitors to Facebook, compared to 76 million for MySpace. This is up from under 40 million for Facebook at this time last year.

Facebook's growth rate is just under four percent per month, with MySpace under one percent. If these trends continue, forecasters predict Facebook becoming the traffic leader by January of next year. The actual break-down of stats is more complex than just visitors per month, with different behaviors amongst users accessing each site. MySpace visitors tend to spend more time on the site and access more of it, while Facebook users don't view as many pages on each visit, making them less attractive to advertisers. These U.S. numbers reflect a continuing global trend away from MySpace; considering worldwide users, Facebook has had the larger number since last year. Have you embraced Facebook yet, or are there any die-hard MySpace fans out there hoping for the tide to turn back in the site's favor?

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