One of our favorite parlor games here at TechCrunch is trying to guess when exactly Facebook will pass MySpace to become the No. 1 social network in the U.S. by unique visitors. Worldwide, Facebook took that crown long ago (in April, 2008). But in the U.S., MySpace has been more difficult to displace.
At the end of last year, according to comScore, the gap in unique U.S. visitors was just over 20 million in MySpace’s favor. At that time, we projected then-current growth rates for both services and calculated that Facebook would pass MySpace no later than January, 2010. It looks like that estimate might be way too conservative. Today, Facebook has narrowed that gap to 9.1 million unique U.S. visitors, and is now on track to pass MySpace in the U.S. within the next three months.
Based on comScore’s latest March data, 61.2 million individuals visited Facebook in the U.S. during the month, compared to 70.2 million for MySpace. Facebook grew by 3.8 million visitors in the month, up 6.7 percent. Meanwhile, MySpace is losing visitors. In March, it attracted 160,000 fewer U.S. visitors than in February, and a whopping 5.8 million less than in January, when it had 76 million U.S. visitors. MySpace is also languishing internationally (based on February numbers).
If MySpace stays flat or loses more momentum, Facebook should have no trouble catching up to it in the U.S by summer.
This should definitely be interesting, i remember when people were crucified for not being on myspace, now people are crucified for being on myspace. Just my opinion, Facebook is a much better choice but I guess it depends on what you do and the type of person you are.
http://twitter.com/cliffdailey
disclaimer: i do have a myspace page because i’m slightly addicted to social media
Im reading closing gaps from more than an year. Likely MySpace gets not-logged-in traffic.
well it took them long enough
Facebook has definitely made a comeback..I remember the days when fbook was second hand to myspace..now their leading the pack…
The only piece of MySpace that still thrives is its music section. If Facebook’s music offering ever gained traction, Myspace would be in serious trouble.
History repeating? What Myspace did to Friendster Facebook could do it to Myspace now??
And who will be Facebook’s menace? Twitter maybe?
Probably not. Why does everyone think facebook and twitter are competitors?
Because people login to Twitter instead of Facebook. Once on Twitter long enough, you eventually stop logging into FB. Pretty natural progression really.
Totally agree- I wish FB hadn’t tried to introduce the tweet real time model either. But there will be something that supersedes FB too… someone is building it right now.
It is not about how many people are on FB or MY but rather how much money those companies are making. So who is making more money? MYSPACE!
I tend to disagree with your assessment.
“Who is making more money?” is a present tense question, which looks at current data. Really, though, you can only look at past data, and guess at this moment’s data. But more importantly (in terms of company value) is FUTURE data.
One way to value a company is to sum the present values of expected future revenues. And I think that FB has MySpace licked in that category.
facebook, its becoming ‘QuizBook’ with the constant bombardment of quiz(s)
based on comScore data? and down to 9 Million. I think FB is probably bigger already.
that’s great, but can they stop myspace-fying facebook? all the quizzes, bling, and promoting…make it stop! i’ve been using it since college, and it’s shocking to get anti-spammer warnings just for sending a few messages to people i am not “friends” with.
Very predictable, MySpace continues to lose traction and Facebook is growing even faster than any of us would have thought at this point. First 200 Million worldwide, then #1 in the US, what else do they have left to do? Oh yeah, make money…
It will be very interesting…
MySpace is starting to take a backseat alot of people say to Facebook now, because they lack apps
At what point do the founders get moved aside?
Once the company stops growing probably.
Facebook has been making many changes to their site and Myspace has been sitting dormant for a while. This doesn’t surprise me at all.
I completely agree. The only way that MySpace will pick back up is if they change around their whole website and show people they are capable of making adjustments to keep things fresh. If Facebook was to have a music section that would beat out MySpace, I think we would see no competition as everyone would then be moving over to Facebook.
Jake
As a musician, I can say there’s no way I’ll be putting any music up on Facebook after their whole TOS ordeal.
May I be so bold as to remind the world that there are actually 6.5 billion of us. Seriously, I don’t see what the big deal is.
f**k Facebook, MyHorribleSecret.com is creating a social network for Evil People!
need to remind techcrunch that facebook isn’t the biggest social network in the world yet. QQ.com (Social Network in China) is still THE biggest, they sailed past 200 million users at the start of Jan – Doesn’t look like facebook / myspace is catching up to it either. Interesting thing about QQ.com they’re making money – lots of money through its media services and affiliate networks. Would be nice for techcrunch to do a profile on them.
Facebook is also burning cash at an alarming rate, and is going to go through an extraordinarily painful down-round. If you can’t make money with 200MM users, you can never make money…
I am not sure the statistical data presenter here i accurate at all.I am convinced that facebook has over taken myspace in the number of subscribers world wide.If one had to argue about the US 9 million does not sound right.
comscore is like a year behind with their data.
I have a list of one million fake Facebook accounts for sale. Used them for spamming now Ill share the wealth.
I am not surprised by this data. Facebook has been quickly eclipsing MySpace due to the clean and useful interface. MySpace features have been crowded out by garish user designs and page formats.