The average U.S. social network user apparently wants to read feeds of photos, links, status updates, videos and comments on Facebook, according to the latest statistics from Compete. The firm’s newly-released study of U.S. web traffic to social networks in January is the latest vindication for the feed-focused redesign that Facebook finished rolling out last fall. The average user had 11 sessions on Facebook when the company started rolling out the last summer, but that number has increased to 17 as of the last month, Compete shows. U.S. rival MySpace introduced feeds last year, but not in key areas like profile pages, and it has hovered around 14 sessions in recent months. Recent company data released by Facebook itself points to similar growth.

The redesign’s ongoing success shows how Facebook may continue to out-compete every other social web service - including MySpace and Twitter - going forward, at least for many users. A scenario is playing out that shows a segmented U.S. social network population, dominated by a few distinct web services. Facebook is where most people tend to network with with friends during and after college, and it’s growing fastest in older demographics. MySpace, meanwhile, seems to be holding constant targeting teen and 20-something users who are interested its content-heavy features in music and video (although others like MyYearbook are popular with teens). Both Facebook and MySpace continue to dwarf rivals in the U.S., if Compete’s numbers are accurate: Facebook had 65.5 million unique visitors and 1.2 billion visits while MySpace had 58.5 million unique visitors and 800 million visits. Facebook self-reports that it has more than 150 million unique users per month, and it is growing fast - it doesn’t disclose how many are in the U.S (but one calculations puts it at more than 45 million). MySpace generally refers to its comScore traffic numbers, which show a slowly-growing 76 million or so users in the U.S. and more than 120 million around the world.