Facebook Up, But MySpace Still Leads By A Very, Very, Very Long Way
Duncan Riley
32 comments »
New figures release by Hitwise show that despite Facebook’s rising traffic, MySpace still dominates US social networking traffic.
Facebook’s traffic grew 51% from December 2006 to December 2007, taking its share of social networking traffic to 16.03%. MySpace’s traffic declined 8% over the same period, to 72.32%, down from 78.89% in December 2006.
To have a little fun with these figures, if Facebook is worth $15 billion, on traffic ratios alone MySpace would be worth $67.67 billion, a nice earn on the $580 million News Corp acquired the site for. Of course it doesn’t work like that, but given the gap in traffic between MySpace and Facebook, and more recently the $15 billion valuation for Facebook, MySpace would likely be worth more today that the $12 billion figure floated in June 2007.
The other notable feature from the figures is that there would appear to be causality between MySpace traffic dropping and Facebook traffic growing indicating that at least some users are switching to Facebook exclusively. Having said that though it’s not at any rate that will see Facebook become the dominant social networking site (traffic wise) in the market any time soon.
Still so much porn spam on MySpace.
I have 450 MySpace friends and haven’t had a genuine conversation with anyone for MONTHS, versus SEVERAL great connections a day with my Facebook buddies.
FB should be worth more on this basis alone.
This certainly does not reflect my social networking usage. I was a devoted MySpacer until I recognized it’s association with the Fox Empire (and it’s obnoxious bunny-slapping banners). I think this sites traffic and genuine user base is skewed towards the spammer types and their affiliates.
I recently took down my profile information and substituted the name “Rupert Murdock”. I suggest everyone do something similar. MYSPACE IS GARBAGE!!!!
anyone else never heard of blackplanet.com before this?
how about this?
myspace is cooler than facebook! if you’re into music and start looking up bands and concerts and want to listen to some music that a friend told you about - it’s all about myspace.
Wow, I would have never though that MySpace had that much of a lead over Facebook. I pretty much thought they were equal in traffic. I’ve never heard of any of the other ones except for Classmates.
Can’t be otherwise.. said of that looooooooooooooooooooooong time ago
MySpace has become polluted. More and more people are moving to Facebook
“anyone else never heard of blackplanet.com before this?”
Black Planet has been around for years and is quite popular with the black internet community.
Just as migente.com is popular with hispanics and asianplanet.com is popular with Asians.
What’s happening to facebook?
The apps killed it.
Did the apps kill it?
Yes they did.
How did the apps kill it?
Together.
Not a fan of facebook or MySpace. May be being in my 30’s I’m over the hill. I just use LinkedIn…..
Anyways, last weekend I visited with my nephew and niece.
Nephew is 15 years old
Niece is 11 years old
When I posed the question to both of them if they use Facebook or MySapce they replied:
Nephew: “Nope. Me and all my friends just use MySpace.”
Niece: “Mom won’t let me have a MySpace account, yet. What’s Facebook?” So, I asked my niece what is her favorite website(s). She answered Club Penguin and Webkinz.
Free market research for Facebook and MySpace.
Friendster is No.1 in Malaysia
I don’t think that they are directly comparable. In terms of entertainment, I think that myspace with its bands and the way it presents videos is superior. I’m not into adding a billion apps on my overcrowded Facebook page. But I’ve been finding more of my old high school/college friends on Facebook with whom I reconnected. They are in Europe and apparently Facebook is gaining a lot of ground there.
BlackPlanet has been around for nearly 10 years . It was “social” before social became the “new” thing.
MySpace is annoying, or rather the way folks just go overboard with their pages..their user interface and navigational architecture is confusing.
Facebook on the other hand, is……annoying :). A bit too restrictive(although somewhat understandable) and their UI and Nav is also crap.
I actually feel that hi5 is a much better in between, not nearly as much spam as MySpace, better user interface overall.
myspace is a spam haven, all of the ‘friend’ requests are from people pitching their products - there’s nothing genuine
but i still like myspace over facebook - myspace has personality
myyearbook is local to me.
Orkut is number one social networking site in south asia and brazil. Interestingly the number one spot on orkut goes to Brazil and number two to America.
However a year back, one new social networking site for launched in India which is getting a lot of hype and attracting a lot of users is BigAdda dot com.
http://www.techbanyan.com/archives/120
Love
Ashanti
@Rodney regarding hi5. I signed up on hi5 maybe a couple of years ago. None of my friends were on there so I didn’t complete my profile. After getting a bunch of emails from people who wanted to add me as friend (though my profile is empty), I disabled my account. I haven’t been on hi5 for about a year and last week I received this email:
——————————-
Dear Benoit,
Thank you for returning to hi5. You requested that your hi5 account be reactivated. Your account with email address ___ is now active.
If your don’t remember your password, you can reset it at http://www.hi5.com/friend/forgotPassword.do
Thanks for joining us,
the hi5 Team
——————————-
And BAM, the spam restarted. It looks like they’re desperate if they’re re-enabling accounts automatically. I doubt this was “by mistake”.
Never really liked Myspace and Facebook is beginning to annoy me with the “apps” that show a lot of irrelevant info in my friend feed. I like the idea of the niche networks in which you can join with your friends that you have the most common interests. I believe this is where social networking is headed. Besides, Facebook is just using you(your profile info) to make money selling highly targeted advertising to make a gazillion dollars.
Benoit,
I got the same thing…never set up a profile and got the same email.
If Facebook just had better support for bands they would be much better off. That’s the only reason I ever touch a myspace page: to listen to music (adblock enabled of course). I can’t believe that many people can tolerate such a hideous site. Everyone’s profile looks like a web page from Geocities or Angelfire back in 1997. Apparently no one in the MySpace demographic realized you shouldn’t tile a photograph as a web page background.
Facebook will rise above Myspace soon. It’s like comparing Apple to Microsoft.
I’d much rather Facebook on a Mac than Myspace on Vista!:) It’s choosing creativity, fun, imagination and what not over PC!
Facebook has been ruined with the apps (these need to be regulated). Myspace has been ruined with spam, terrible interface design and a team of shit house coders.
Myspace is successful because it allows boys n girls to flirt in atmosphere that seems casual and not a desperate internet dating site. But the fact is it is dominated by singles!
Facebook is terrible for singles. Let’s face it the chicks always look hotter on myspace its a running joke.
If I had a lot of cash I’d put some celebrity endorsement behind a myspace clone that was well built but still allowed for complete customization (its ugly, abused, but it draws people back). As someone said above - facebook has no personality.
Facebook is the smart kid in the corner at the party. Polite. Pleasant. BORING.
Myspace is the jock cracking Jock or the pretentious attention whore. Everyone hates them but they are ENTERTAINING because they produce DRAMA.
^^^^
And B4UParty.com is the friendly girl next door who has cuteness AND personality…
so how do ppl think facebook worths 15 bil?
i am interested to know the demographic of facebook vs myspace users.. ne1 knows?
Myspace wins on spam hits alone - those figures are so skewed im surprised they made it onto techcrunch.
In making up valuations for the companies, you seem to have overlooked the *rest of the world outside of the U.S.* According to traffic from Alexa.com, fewer than 25% of Facebook users are in the U.S., compared to 44% for MySpace. Internationally, volume of traffic to MySpace and Facebook are almost identical, but Facebook is rising rapidly. MySpace currently has about 3x as many accounts as Facebook, but it’s not clear how many of those are active. In Canada, for example, MySpace has sunk to a rank around #13, while Facebook is at #2 (these ranks are a little messy because domains count separately — e.g., google.com and google.ca are measured individually).