If you thought Randall Stross’ attack on Tesla yesterday was in poor taste, wait until you read what Michael Wolff has to say about MySpace. In a dinner interview with BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine, Wolff says:
…if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.
That’s just part of a much longer interview in which Wolff goes into detail on exactly why he thinks MySpace will go the way of AOL. He also makes some blatantly incorrect statements, such as “All of the growth now in MySpace is international,” which is incorrect. In the last year MySpace has grown about 10% in the U.S., adding 7.5 million monthly unique users to a total of 76.4 million. Non-U.S. users have grown from 45 million to 54 million, a 17% increase. (source: Comscore)
And those comments about MySpace users being poor and uneducated aren’t entirely correct either. Of MySpace’s U.S. users, 52% make more than $60,000 per year, which is far from poor. 23% make more than $100,000 per year. Just 11.6% make less than $25k/year.
Facebook’s numbers are 65% and 33%, respectively, which is more impressive. But MySpace has 30 million more U.S. users than Facebook (76 million v. 46 million), so MySpace’s aggregate numbers are higher. 17.6 million U.S. MySpace users make more than $100,000 per year.
Also true of MySpace users, according to Nielsen: 63% own homes, 86% are registered voters and 28% are college graduates. Facebook has similar numbers.
And a whole lot of people smart enough to work a Blackberry device seem to like MySpace, too.
See the graph below for more details.
Hate to say it…he’s right!
you, sir, are a moron.
Actually, according to your name, YOU are a moron. Platt is right, and so is Wolff, as nasty as his wording was.
MySpace users may CLICK on ads, but they don’t click through to convert. That’s why the CPM on MySpace ads is so pathetically low.
If you create a community that caters to high school and college kids, you’re going to find that they tend not to buy things, because they have no money.
If you create a community that caters to high school and college kids, you’re going to find that they tend not to buy things, because they have no money.
Those are the type of people that tend to buy things on a whim, I would think they are better for advertisers. And if HS and college kids didn’t have “any money” why do people target them?
“MySpace users may CLICK on ads, but they don’t click through to convert. That’s why the CPM on MySpace ads is so pathetically low.”
Oh… silly you.
Ads don’t matter. That is just the cream at the top. Facebook hasn’t figured out what MySpace has yet… which is that Social Networks *CANNOT* make money. MySpace is evolving into a social media platform and is moving away from social networking. There just isn’t any money there.
Facebook stuck true to their origins and they remain an awesome social network but they aren’t making money. If you include their international users, Facebook is now bigger than MySpace. That means they have at least as much over head but at the same time are only expected to pull in about $300 mill in the next fiscal year (see previous articles about FB having to search for VC lately). MySpace on the other hand is expected to rake in over $1 billion ($840 million last year) in the up coming fiscal year.
So… a $70 CPM would be nice… but MySpace doesn’t need it. They have several good ways to leverage their user base for profit and have several more up their sleeves.
Unbelievable. Techcrunch takes apart the article point by point and the first comment is “he’s right!”.
Please, it’s too late for you, but you can save others. Sterilize yourself now. It’s depressing to think of you breeding.
i would love to see the stats on how stupid and rich the people that comment here are.
nobody in ther right mind believes neilsons stats.
stupidlocator
im with you man lol
The demographics really isn’t the issue. The issue is NO ONE I know uses MySpace. It was the rage, but, on average, people haven’t been back to check their page, invites, etc., for 6 mos or more.
Funny – I made a comment on a music industry panel about MySpace dieing and got into a verbal fight. Didn’t think I was too off then, and still don’t if you look at the growth rates and just who actually still goes to MySpace
and now the same is happening to facebook as the curve moves more towards it being a site for “the olds”. Just how it goes….
Well I can understand why you had an argument. All the music on FB has been bought and packaged. If you want to find bleeding edge then it’s MySpace all the way.
86% percent of myspace users are registered voters so I think that pretty much sums it up. Mental Retardation is a prerequisite for voting
He’s NOT right at all. If there were anything that ever illustrated an ivory tower view regarding social networking, it would be the constant derision of MySpace. I’m not a fan of any social networking sites, but it’s plainly obvious that MySpace is ground zero for new music, film and media creation on the internet. Myspace is still the hotbed of where independent artists find a wider audience. Don’t really see that on Facebook. Facebook is more along the lines of ‘first you get the khakis then you get the women’.
And the bottom line is that MySpace users are the demographic who click on ads. Even those really anoying flashing ads, ads for dating sites, etc.
Conversely, most of the demographic of Facebook users are desensitized to advertising to the extent that they are even against it. The self-serve/classified ads on FB are joke, with anecdotal evidence suggesting that the return on them is very small.
I too suspect Woff’s data is v wrong, but regardless – the point is MySpace users click on almost $1bn worth of adverts, and to me that is the target demographic to have.
Facebook users are bigger dummies than Myspace users. The proof being that you can sell more acai berry diets to FB users. It’s a total scam but they keep on buying.
Thats stupid , Myspace users being poor while Facebook users being considered rich ? WTF !
Is this how you judge user base of a website ?
They already did that with the Search Engines. They said Yahoo users are poor and Google users are Rich.
http://search.t...and+google+rich
MySpace and Facebook are also filled with more high schoolers and below as well. I don’t see those $0 incomes accounted for in those population numbers. No clue if that means anything though.
Looks like some analyst drank too much coffee…
Besides the fact that people lie. I’m pretty sure if your a 16 year old kid working at the local McDonald’s you don’t make $100k a year.
Wow, generally I’m surprised by the high incomes (relatively) and the amount of people that are homeowners. I would have assumed that since so many people under the age of 22-23 use Facebook and Myspace those percentages would have been lower… guess not though
Peter
http://www.thew...ar.com/facebook
smart folks like me have no account @ neither facebook or myspace
Your mama must be proud of you for blowing your own trumpet.
Why not you blow me instead?
I understand why Wolff made his remarks about MySpace, I’ve been saying for months that from the looks of the typical home page on MySpace the average user must be trailer trash. However. if Facebook allowed such home page customizations I fear it would make MySpace users look like intellectuals in comparison. Both sites are lousy with retards, really. There is certainly room for a next generation, hip social networking site. And then I will be one of the first to drop BOTH MySpace AND Facebook.
If you have a good entry exam test that users would pass to check if they are retards or not, I think you might have one the best tool ever to save the planet.
Stupidity is the number one problem to solve in the world.
Idiocracy rules!
http://www.imdb...itle/tt0387808/
Pierre
Someone would find a way to cheat.
no because they wold be too stupid. lol
The only valuable point is that MySpace is profitable and Facebook is not!
Actually both are not running above red, they’re still trying to find a successful model to make money. In the long run, Facebook will win here, it’s only obvious. Facebook is always looking to change and set a new limit on social success.
Profits will come when Facebook learns to monetize locally via specific networks that users reside in. An example is: People living in San Diego will have specific ads for local businesses only based out of San Diego to drive local sales.
MySpace doesn’t have a database to do this in the future, and that’s when Facebook beats MySpace. Sorry to discuss the future facts so early.
Good facts but Facebook has a specific problem which is it’s users preferences. I mean any drastic change in it’s policy to make money may tend to outrage from users. This makes choosing a revenue model harder.
“People living in San Diego will have specific ads for local businesses only based out of San Diego to drive local sales.”
And they still won’t click on them.
“People living in San Diego will have specific ads for local businesses only based out of San Diego to drive local sales.”
Facebook already allows advertisers to target ads based on users’ city, state, sex, age, keywords, education, workplace, relationship status, and sexual tendency.
They do if they stay on the music route. I still know several people who use myspace – mostly in some way related to music.
The idea that social networks can profit by being able to target locally is such a sham. GeoIP databases have been available free and opensource for years. Anyone can target locally absolutely free with greater accuracy than a social network would ever gain through user submitted information.
I’m not sure how Comscore gets its numbers, but my bet is that they’re self-reported. When it comes to incomes, people tend to exaggerate and I wouldn’t but too much stock in their accuracy. Facebook is dominated by college students and people just starting out. MySpace is an even younger demographic. The only way I can see 65% of people on Facebook actually making $65K + per year is if this is a measure of total household income and college students are reporting what they believe their parents make.
exactly!
+1
The notion that either one of these sites caters to a specific demographic is hogwash. Everyone and their grandmother are on both networks. I’m sure they are both pretty representative of the greater US population (banjos not withstanding).
anyone else get that twanging music in their head when viewing that pic?
bana ner na ner na ner na ner…
is it the young buck from Deliverance?
I doubt the accuracy of the data for all of the reasons already stated…but for the sake of argument, I’ll pretend it’s correct.
For one thing, millions of people have accounts on BOTH services. I’d guess that most Facebook users also have a MySpace account. This would account for so much similarity in data.
It would be more useful if the data was for people who use one service or the other exclusively (or at least a large majority of their time using social media). I, for one, have a MySpace account but have largely abandoned it in favor of Facebook, only checking MySpace when I have a message there. (I haven’t touched my profile, my photo albums, or anything else there in months.) I wouldn’t count myself as much of a MySpace user, and I imagine there are many like me who shouldn’t count as such.
Just some thoughts, no clear conclusion.
Fishy numbers
MySpace 39.6 Million users make up 52% of Users (>$60K income)
while 32.6 Million users make up 63% of Users (homeowners)
?????
Also it all matters which portion of the user base clicks thru the ads. If it’s $60K they are probably smart enough not to fall for the stupid ads.
the first set is from comscore, the second from nielsen.
ok can we just think like normal person do :
if am under 18 and wanna have friends , first time cyber !, or run from school hell social life myspace is the choice.
if am 18+ and wanna work or find long term relationship i will go to facebook.
poor or rich ..on online profile no one give damn if am having 100k income or my dad still pick up my bills..its about how social hot ugly stupid funny lame you are and your point for being on myspace or facebook
It took me literally 5 minutes to fumble through your broken typing and sentence syntax.
I still have no idea what you just said, but I’m guessing it was uninteresting.
Anyway, the basis of Facebook/Myspace for advertisers is not the conversions or the click-through rates – those have proven ineffective. Its the ability for brands to connect with a demographic they would otherwise have to attract to their website.
Facebook and Myspace allow companies to build their own “profiles” and users can befriend or “become a fan of” their brand. Drawing younger crowds can be very effective with the use of social media… take a look at Dell, Target, or Moosejaw. Effective marketing with the use of social media is a great idea for aging brands.
I should just also mention, I laughed at some of the information gathered. How were these surveys conducted? I have both a Facebook and Myspace account and I don’t remember getting asked questions like that.
I question how many people opted into that survey and its accuracy in general. I think my Myspace profile says I make over $100,000 per year, but I assure you that’s a lie.
Well, Myspace actually IS for children/teens. I can’t remember having ever stepped over an interesting myspace blog.
Myspace blogs are
- ugly and without design
- old
- buggy and slow
They’re a perfect fit for people who don’t know anything about internet and have no sense of graphic beauty whatsoever.
The MySpace blogging community puts out over 700,000 blog posts a day. There is a massive community of bloggers over the age of 25 on there that write high quality content. But because they aren’t tech savvy individuals that is where they set up shop.
Also for people to make sweeping statements that the overall site is all tweens haven’t looked at demographic numbers for the site. When Facebook was closed to most people MySpace had a massive number of adults joining. Facebook actually skewed younger age wise until they opened up the network.
I agree that many of the skins are downright offensive to the eyes, but FB is plain. It’s functional, but has 0 character. People like it b/c their friends are there. But if you look at MySpace’s “friends” collections they make it much easier to meet random people around the world. I’ve heard Zuckerberg bemoan the fact that people “friend” people who aren’t really friends, but after the excitement of finding an old collegemate or high school chum wears off, our lives have so diverged we have nothing left to talk about, and I like to meet new & interseting folks, which is difficult on FB. MySpace – can be an eyesore but to me still more interesting.
How quickly we forget – please re-read the whole discussion around Danah Boyd’s excellent research into this issue.
Beyond that, and without judgement, I think bemused is onto something, but not in the way they perhaps think. This sounds like more evidence to support why advertising is dead. Smart companies are preparing for the future without advertising at the heart of their marketing budgets.
Why listen to Danah Boyd? She is only smarter than every commenter on this post.
Advertising is alive and well. It makes me richer every day. It’s not going anywhere. Thanks to all those supposedly internet savvy users on FB, I make a good return on my ads.
Should’ve used a picture of a gangster wannabe, instead of a banjo player. You are lame, and out of touch from this world
and of course the people in the nielsen survey were telling the truth about how much money they earn? just like Joe The Plumber™
for the record, I earn $450,000 per week and don’t use MySpace. I could be making all that up though!
I believe you. I really do. Do you believe it?
I’m not 100% sure how accurate that income data is, but I’m hoping they went about it in a smarter way then going off what people put as their income in their profile.
MySpace’s success is similar to McDonald’s — many of us are likely to deny up and down that we have ever patronized McDonald’s, but the truth is all of us at one point in our lives wolfed down some of those billions of hamburgers served.
Sure, spend some time inside a McDonald’s, and you wonder about humanity, and your worse thoughts about social class system flood your brain.
In some segment of the society, it is considered status-elevating to make fun of people who eat at McDonald’s and hang out at MySpace, but then, always remember this: those quarter-pounders and ugly web pages paid for quite a few private jets.
Neilsen and comscore make up numbers to make money. People quote them all the time. I don’t know whether a lie is good to repeat or journalists are idiots who don’t do their own research to come up with the numbers themselves.
I’m really really surprised that you, Michael Arrington, would believe that 63% of MySpace users could POSSIBLY own homes. That’s (expletive) ludicrous!
subprime users ?
Neilsend is great!
Cool, I don’t use myspace and facebook~~
Is it important what the demographics are?
Isn’t it more important where the buyers of your products are?
The demographics indicate only the potential. If the potential people buy less than people will less income or assets then your advertising should address those buyers with less income.
gawd, myspace is soooo lame. fio people. fio.
@DS: Classic. Amazing, I just glanced at the stats and just about laughed my ass out of bed at that. 63% are homeowners, when I know that 85% of all users are tweens.
Where did your magic number come from?
damn right, having daddy let you stay in his house doesnt mean you own a home.
63% own homes <- just doesn’t seem right, and suspect isn’t
I’m surprised that in all of these comments one of MySpace’s biggest advantages over Facebook hasn’t been mentioned – music. And I’m not talking about buying music on MySpace (although a lot of people do that), rather the fact that it’s a great place to hear new tunes and find out about new artists. Facebook isn’t even in the same league when it comes to this, though I prefer Facebook’s tidy interface and lack of spam.
The way I see it, they’re for two different things. Facebook for keeping in touch with people you know, MySpace for finding interesting people you don’t.
I made a venn diagram on GraphJam to explain the fundamental flaw in this research:
http://mine.ica...px?ciid=2754081
good work intersting.
if you photos lover watch more pictures.
http://photoslo...rs.blogspot.com
What a total LOAD. Where are those numbers coming from? MySpace Profiles? Because I’ll tell you right now my income is set to $250k+ on my profile and I make less than $50k in reality.
Do you get a lot of girls by doing that?
i personally like myspace alot and i suspect that stereotyping users like that is silly obviously especially since one might have to also look at what the communities can do and give back to people. myspace is as much about discovery as it is about anything. some of the biggest players today started out with a simple profile on friendster and then the bug hit em and now they own their own networks
I wonder when people are a weebit snobby and think that the average Facebook profile (uni educated etc) is more worthy than a MySpace profile (tween gossip/music focused type) – forgets one imprtant thing. Age.
Those younger kids on MySpace may be a bit juvenile and dont have a large capacity to earn/spend. But in 5-years they will be through college or already in jobs and spending up large. If MySpace can keep them engaged till that time, maybe they will be in the box seat…
Anyone have LinkedIn’s numbers for comparison?
I like turtles.
Thank you…you’re a good zombie.
high school ed – myspace
uni ed facebook
I don’t put too much faith in the numbers presented. After all, I see plenty of 16 and 17 year old kids on MySpace who say they make over $100k a year and drive Lamborghinis… How much faith do you hold in the numbers?
You see Michael, that’s the beauty of statistics. 17.6 Million US users on MySpace make over $100k? Give me a freaking break!!! And why do you continue to quote Comscore numbers when everyone knows that they are pointless and wrong?
I’ve never lied about my income on a social network!
How do they even arrive at the statistics? I don’t recall filling in my income bracket when I sign up with Facebook… Makes you wonder about the intellect of Friendster users thou.
Having worked inside a large web company, we used to laugh at how off Comscore & Nielsen numbers were from our internals. So, I wouldn’t necessarily write off Wolff’s obvious hyperbole purely based on Nielsen’s data. Those who have access to MySpace’s internal numbers are likely able to identify trends (at least directionally) much sooner than they become evident in publicly available (sampling-based) numbers.
myspace is the trailer park of the internet
i think its pathetic they used that picture from deliverance. that guy could outplay all of you and make the rest of you look stupid.
so are we tying intelligence to money? I suppose that is why america interviews basketball players on politics.
socnets are for the herd anyway.
@Michael and @ all
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL:
“And those comments about MySpace users being poor and uneducated aren’t entirely correct either. Of MySpace’s U.S. users, 52% make more than $60,000 per year, which is far from poor. 23% make more than $100,000 per year.”
Are you people out of your g***damn-mind???
That would mean that 75% (52% PLUS 23%…) of the MySpace users would make over 60.000 a year. LOOOOOOOL
You made my day, michael. This is insane… Even 6th graders should get, that this figure is total bs!
Sincerely yours,
Mr. LOL
AND: By the way: writing shady numbers and strange statistics
(”75% (52% PLUS 23%…) of the MySpace users would make over 60.000 a year”, for example!)
is EXACTLY the reason traditional media and normal newspapers pick on blogs!
Thank you very much…
You owe us an apologie, Micke!
Your
Mr. LOL
You sir are an embarrassment… Do you get paid for this? If you do save yourself the shame and resign.
Eric over at Venturebeat has a great take on this. Mine was simpler: Facebook centers on “is” (info and activity) and Myspace on “my” (identity).
Randy (www.answerjam.com)
The picture in the article is disturbing …. Whatta f*&* does it mean ? Is it meant to represent myspace users ?
gives me the hebby-gibbies
FWIW, I have an account on neither (that I remember), but I have spent a fair amount of time browsing myspace profiles of local (LA) musicians and their friends. I don’t pay attention to the ads… but then I never really know why I buy certain products.
i guess the guy is right, myspace users are there to spend time f_cking around myspace users, not to shop or spend money. myspace does not provide anything that users would pay for. myspace users have developed what is called ”banner blindness”.
I dont know if they are poor, but even if they are rich it does not matter, cuz they are on myspace to f_ck around, nothing else.
Is this income data taken from the self reported what is your income, that many people like and put 100k plus to try to get girls?
hahah
I think we’re all missing the point here. myspace is lame! The pages and the interface are crappy. Facebook isn’t the greatest either, but it’s a lot better than myspace. I just hate it and I always have. I wrote a post today about the social networks that I do like.