Social networking sites slow and inaccessible

Facebook Fails Users

In recent research, WatchMouse found that many of the world's largest online social networks have poor site performance, leaving users waiting for sites to load or encountering errors. Of the 104 sites monitored, the immensely popular Facebook (facebook.com) site was the worst performer; recording a slow load time and more errors than any other monitored site. Windows Live Spaces (spaces.live.com) also performed poorly while Friends Reunited (friendsreunited.co.uk) and MySpace (myspace.com) loaded well and recorded few errors. Conductors of the research, WatchMouse, is a leading supplier of website performance monitoring. Combining industry expertise with 25+ global monitoring stations, WatchMouse provides many multinational companies with independent verification of site performance.

WatchMouse Site Performance Index: Definition

The WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI) quantifies the user perception of speed and availability of a site in a single number. The SPI is computed by adding up the time needed to load the main page, adding a penalty for each failed request. The higher the number, the lower the customer experience of the site. Sites with an SPI of 500 perform well, whereas an index of 1500 or higher is an indication of a seriously negative user experience.

The WatchMouse Site Performance Index was developed by Dr Peter van Eijk and his team, based on many years of practical experience and research into the performance and availability of computer systems. The current version of the SPI is computed as follows.
One of the 25 test stations of the WatchMouse worldwide network retrieves the homepage of the site at a fixed frequency, without images, frames, etc. This HTML page is expected to download within 8 seconds, without any errors. If this time is exceeded, or if an error occurs, this is verified by one of the other test stations. This check is called the "2nd opinion check". If this check also reports an error, this is counted as "not available".
All 2nd opinion checks, and all successful checks, are taken into account. All the connect and download times of all successful checks are added together. For each failed (2nd opinion) check, a 10 second penalty is added. The SPI is the sum of these, expressed as an average over 1000 checks.

Do you also wish to receive a report on the performance of your company's website? Sign up for a free 30-day trial subscription without any further obligations. You will receive an availability report each week, and you can have your staff alerted by e-mail or SMS in the event of problems.

www.watchmouse.com/trial