The internet marketing research firm comScore, Inc. provides periodic reports illustrating website metrics including tangibles like traffic and more subjective insights like social media and advertising effectiveness and user engagement. In the company’s latest review, Tagged.com was ‘tagged’ ahead of giants Facebook and Twitter as the United States’ most engaging social network. Considering most people likely haven’t even heard of it, this is an extraordinary achievement.
The numbers are fairly surprising and in cases, downright impressive. Tagged users visit the site only half as frequently as Facebook users, but spend more minutes on the network on average. Tagged was the only social media site to score in the top two spots for both duration and number of visits.
But what exactly is Tagged.com? The term social discovery has been adopted by the site’s founders to describe a process of making new social connections similar to how LinkedIn users network professionally. In its current state, Tagged is intended to coexist, not compete, with Facebook. So far, attempts at prying market share away from the ubiquitous ‘Social Network’ have proven fruitless, as in the case of Google+.
The network’s distinguishing feature is the ability to deliberately find new people to connect with. Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, which rely heavily upon existing connections to expand one’s network, Tagged encourages reaching out and responding to strangers who live in the same area or share common interests and activities. The allure of easily finding new friends seems to be effective; the comScore review reported upwards of 330 million members generating an average of 2.4 million new matches every day.
Joining yet another social network is a tall request for many devoted Facebook and Twitter users. It is early to determine whether Tagged will ultimately fit into the grand scheme of social media, but because the nature of the site certainly offers the early adopter a head start, it may continue to grow exponentially. Given its impressive metrics, there is little reason to doubt this new entrant into the race.
