Mediaboss Marketing

Keynote Systems, the expert in Internet and mobile cloud monitoring, monitors the top 10 UK social networking sites on a monthly basis and analyses how these sites perform compared to their competitors. By Robert Castley.

In February, two sites were added to the social media index; Google+ a multilingual social networking and identity service, and Pinterest a pin-board style photo sharing website. These additions had a positive impact on the performance of the social media index as a whole, with the average load time decreasing from 3.53 seconds in January to 3.44 seconds in February. Furthermore, availability the chances of a website loading correctly when visited shot up from 98.69 percent in January to 99.51 percent in February.

A simple login page, with very few objects to load, has allowed Google+ to deliver exceptional speed and reliability from its site, making a great first impression on visitors. It featured at the top of the table for both load time, with an impressive 0.6 seconds, and availability, with a 99.93 percent successful load rate. Pinterest found itself positioned in the centre of the table, although performed better than the average the homepage had a load time of 2.33 seconds and a success rate of 99.71 percent for February.

Although all of the sites fell at least one place in the February rankings, due to the introduction of Google+ and Pinterest, collectively the sites performed well. Six out of the eleven sites loaded in under two seconds, and nine out of the eleven sites had a successful load rate of over 99 percent.

It was great to see these newer sites, which have gained more traction in recent months, positioning so highly in the rankings. Even Pinterest, which landed in seventh place, performed impressively considering the entire site is made up of images, which are often more complex to load. The updated index also shows how social media sites are becoming increasingly competitive in terms of load time and availability, something that can be particularly challenging when a site is in its early growth stages and the level of traffic is unpredictable. All in all, Google+ and Pinterest seem to be a well performing addition to the social media landscape!

About the author

Robert Castley has been a solutions consultant at internet testing and monitoring specialist Keynote, for over three years. Prior to working at Keynote, Robert worked as a Professional Services Consultant at a document management company, Macro 4, where he worked on developing custom web interfaces. He regularly engages with customers and has an in-depth technical knowledge in web development. One of his proudest achievements is developing one of the worlds most popular Open Source Content Management Systems to the masses Mambo, which now lives on as Joomla!

Robert is an authoritative spokesperson on web performance and regularly participates in industry events on the topic. Robert is passionate about the need to provide the optimum experience for internet users, irrelevant of the device they are using. He advocates a three screen approach that provides a consistent experience whether a website is being accessed via mobile, tablet or desktop computer.

About the company

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Performance of social networking sites – Index from Keynote Systems for February 2013