To be honest, when I first saw this news , I couldn't believe MySpace was the second-most popular social network until now. And by "most popular," we're referring to web traffic here. LinkedIn, the top social network for business professionals , is now the number 2 most popular social network on the web. Here are the stats:

• According to comScore, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors in June, an increase of about half a million from the month before.
• Fewer than 33.5 million Americans visited MySpace in June, falling off by about 1.4 million U.S. visitors from May.
• Facebook, still in first place by far, amassed 160.8 million unique visitors in June.

That said, MySpace has approximately 130 million active users, whereas LinkedIn has about 115 million. While one could argue for MySpace in this case, the numbers are still indicative that LinkedIn is growing in popularity -- and MySpace is lagging.

And according to CNN.com, MySpace may not keep their 3rd place status for very long. With MySpace experiencing half the traffic it did in June 2010 and Twitter accumulating 30.6 million visitors in June, Twitter is expected to overtake MySpace as the 3rd-most popular social network in the next few months.

Marketing Takeaway:

It looks like we'll soon be looking at Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter as the big 3 of the social networking world. Is your business utilizing these helpful marketing tools to its advantage?

Participating in social media can have a number of business benefits, including brand management, community building, content promotion, and lead generation, to name a few. With the rising popularity of social media, it behooves all businesses to start using them to achieve business goals.

Has your company gotten started using LinkedIn and other social media sites for business?

Photo Credit: Nan Palmero