Posted by
Gary Beerman
on
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Facebook continues to demonstrate why it is the number one social network in the world. No, we’re not just talking about its continuous innovation and development of new apps, or even the release of its new Skype-powered video-chat feature, Video Calling. We’re talking about its ability to deliver a high quality Web experience to each and every user. We’re talking about its grasp of website performance.
For yet another consecutive quarter, Facebook ranked as the fastest social network. In fact, its website speed increases with every quarter that passes. In Q2, users visiting the site could expect to wait a mere 0.70 seconds for the homepage to load, down a fraction from Q1.
What’s more, Facebook delivered 99.98 percent availability in Q2, making it the most reliable network as well. To reach the number one position, Facebook had to overcome YouTube, which had retained the honor for the past two quarters and fell just short this quarter with an equally impressive 99.97 percent availability. LinkedIn, which was ranked as the second most reliable network in Q1, came in third with 99.93 percent availability. Despite dropping in the rankings, both YouTube and LinkedIn improved their availability over last quarter.
LinkedIn and YouTube were also among the fastest social networks in Q2, with 1.34 and 1.58 second response times, respectively.
To compile the Web Performance Index for Social Networks, SmartBear Software uses AlertSite to monitor the home pages of these sites from 12 U.S. locations, every five minutes between 6 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. EST.