The stats recently presented by the research company ComScore show that Facebook’s popularity has risen as much as overcoming MySpace’s. For the first time since its launch, Facebook managed to attract a significantly larger number of visitors than what was thought to be the world’s largest social networking Web site.

The figures released by ComScore show that last month, MySpace 114.6 million unique visitors and 45.4 billion page views, while Facebook registered 123.9 million unique visitors and 50.6 billion page views worldwide, showing a great popularity raise over the last few months.

MySpace is still the number one social networking Web site in the United States, bringing in twice as many visitors as Facebook every month. Facebook’s success overseas has recorded an extremely quick and powerful boost, with a 162 percent user base growth in the past 12 months, which stands out compared to MySpace’s 5 percent.

Facebook’s massive support from the European area was surely triggered by this year’s release of the Spanish, French and German versions of the popular Web site, allowing users to try a much more personal experience and a faster site surfing action.

MySpace was launched in 2003 and quickly became the market’s biggest hit with its complete set of features which include blogs, groups, photos and music. Facebook was launched one year later by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student at the time, and until September 2006 was strictly receiving subscriptions from students, initially only Harvard students, then also included other colleges in the Ivy League. The next step was to allow all university students and high school students and starting with 2006 allowed anyone over 13.

Rupert Murdoch, MySpace’s owner, is trying to protect his $580 million investment made in 2005, calling Facebook the "flavor of the month," as quoted by the WashingtonPost. He also added that the research shows that his Web site’s visitors spend a lot more time online than the ones visiting Facebook.

In order to keep its subscribers close and also attract new ones, MySpace will soon present a new face with some new software tools and features and also plans an update for later this year which will include an online shop for buying music downloads and concert tickets.

The battle between the two to attract users is closely related to their efforts of finding new advertisers, each keeping its eyes on the $1.4 billion expected to be invested in numerous publicity campaigns featured on the social networking Web sites. Taking into consideration the large number of visitors for both Web sites, companies looking to maximize their profits could send some of their advertising funds in both directions, just as many users choose to keep a profile on each site.

At this point, Facebook registers more than 80 million active users and MySpace passed the 100 million users bar more than a year and a half, the two going head to head for the past few years in their quests to attract new subscribers.