It wasn’t until the week of January 18th this year that Facebook over MySpace in terms of search volume in Google.  Now it looks like they may both be loosing their audiences to Twitter.Here’s a screen shot I just took comparing the search volume in Google for the terms Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Searches for MySpace in the US actually peaked in July of 2007 and have been on a decline ever since, but they had so much initial momentum it has taken a long time for Facebook to catch up and Facebook still has never reached the heights that MySpace did with US users.

I wouldn’t go out and bet on a two week trend, but it is interesting that for the last two weeks as the interest in Twitter has continued to heat up searches for both MySpace and Facebook have declined.    If you dig a little deeper you find that while Facebook is leading for news stories right now, they’re not the kind of stories fb might prefer.  “Facebook virus” is second only in search volume to “new facebook” and in the top ten is also “Facebook worm”.    In the meantime top searches for Twitter all positive and include Twitter tips, Twitter search, how to Twitter, which show increased interest by people new to the idea of Twitter.  Furthermore Twitter has caught up in search volume for news with MySpace, suggesting if they can stay in the limelight they could see much bigger gains before the year is out.