Facebook's U.S. Visitors Decline in May, ComScore Says

Facebook Inc. (FB)’s audience in the U.S. declined in May while the amount of time users spent on the social-networking website rose, according to ComScore (SCOR) Inc.

The number of visitors to Facebook.com dropped less than 1 percent to 158 million in May from April, Reston, Virginia-based ComScore said in an emailed statement. Visitors in April also fell less than 1 percent from March.

The average amount of time visitors spent on the site rose less than 1 percent to 381 minutes in May from a month ago, ComScore said. That came after a decline of 3.1 percent in the previous month.

Facebook, owner of the world’s most popular social- networking service, gets about half of its revenue from the U.S. and Canada. The company, which held its initial public offering last month, is depending on a combination of increasing engagement on the site and new users to help woo advertisers.

Shares of Menlo Park, California-based Facebook fell 1 percent to $31.60 at the close in New York. The stock has declined 17 percent from the IPO price of $38.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net