The gap between Facebook and MySpace is growing wider in the U.S. In May, Facebook finally caught up to MySpace in unique U.S. visitors and surpassed its rival social network by a smidgeon. Last month, Facebook left MySpace in the dust, according to June data from comScore. Facebook reached 77 million unique visitors for the month of June, rising from 70.28 million unique visitors in May. MySpace had 68.4 million unique visitors in June, dropping from 70.25 million unique visitors in May.
Facebook is steadily growing in the U.S.; the network gained just under 7 million unique visitors in June compared to a gain of 2.8 million U.S. unique visitors in May. In comparison, MySpace lost nearly 4 million unique visitors in June, compared to 700,000 unique visitors lost in May. While Facebook is growing both in the U.S. and internationally, MySpace appears to be stagnating.
The widening of the gap between the rival social networks network comes at a time when MySpace is under new management and recently terminated two-thirds of its international staff, laying off staff in countries where MySpace is being trounced by Facebook. MySpace’s international numbers were startling. For example, in India, where social networking is growing fast, Facebook had 6.4 million unique visitors in May, compared to 848,000 unique visitors to MySpace. In our most recent model of the true value of social networks, MySpace fell below Facebook, dropping from the top spot last year.
MySpace still generates more page views than Facebook. In June, MySpace had 32.4 billion page views in the U.S., but that number dropped 10 percent in a single month, from May (gulp). Facebook is catching up there as well, with 21.3 billion page views in June, a 12 percent increase from May. And worldwide, Facebook is already ahead. As we reported a few months ago, worldwide monthly page views for MySpace declined from 47.4 billion a year ago to 38 billion in April, a 20% drop. In that same period Facebook grew from 44 billion to 87 billion, a roughly 100% increase. MySpace’s user number growth has stalled out also, and developers are reporting that activity on MySpace is decreasing at a dramatic rate, as high as “half a percent a week.”
A decline in user numbers isn’t the only predicament that MySpace is in—there is speculation that the social network could lose one of its major revenue streams in the near future. In 2010, MySpace will be receiving its last “welfare payment” from Google (stemming from an advertising deal between News Corp. and Google struck in 2006), after which it looks like it will be cut off. Under the terms of the agreement, MySpace will receive $300 million over the next year if the network hits certain search pageview requirements, which considering the recent data on page views, may not happen.
Meanwhile, Facebook shows no signs of slowing down. The network successfully launched its “vanity URLs,” in June, with millions of users signing up for the new feature within days. The network also got some notice around its use during the Iran elections and protests, and around the new privacy settings surrounding its “Everyone” button.
Let see if facebook can mantain the status like MySpace or amazon does (In the online store competition, I’m pretty sure, in the next year would be a nice facebook competitor. MySpace innovate things in online social networks but was kinda difficult manipulate the profile, facebook made a fresh layout and incredible third party platform also easy to use, this post was matter of time to be noticed.
John
http://www.encu...ntry/JobUsa.htm
——————————————————————————————-
USA online Jobs
I marvel at the fact that people can still put up with MySpace. Facebook rocks. Let’s see who comes to unnerve it.
Myspace still makes more money than Facebook, so they are literally eating the cake. Why pay for all that unnecessary server space when u are wasting all the money. Sell some books, movies, etc and earn that cold hard cash.
where’s the like-button?
I was just thinking the same thing
Yes, me too searching for the same
me three.
Mike, do you think there’s any chance that MySpace can make a comeback from this?
MIXED METAPHOR ALERT
Mmm, gap dust… tasty.
Personally, I hope MySpace will be able to turn things around. I am belatedly posting to my FB account more often now, but I use them networks differently, and certain FB “features” I find useless or annoying.
It’s true, I needed help to get my MySpace set up the way I wanted it, because it was not super-simple. However, once set up, I found my Space is easy to use.
Why shouldn’t there be two major social networks? The real question concerns, ultimately, the revenue stream.
This is all interesting stuff, but there is no mention of Twitter. jk
@John, MySpace isn’t maintaining though. Even in rural, back water Washington, NC everyone uses FaceBook.com. Once the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature set up on FaceBook a few hundred fans jump on board without any advertising.
FaceBook seems to be taken more seriously than MySpace with adults.
Facebook has too many apps that slow the viewing process down. Myspace is cooler simply because it has a better more friendlier and informative design………user page
Myspace is still “OK” as a social network. When I say that, I’d rather someone have a “Myspace” page than NO profile online at all.
Now, at the same time, saying Myspace is inferior to Facebook does NOT make Facebook great. Facebook is way too closed off and bizarre in its UI and design (way too complicated for its own good). But, FB at least is trying to adapt.
When Myspace came out and hit the big time in ‘05 it literally didn’t change its platform at all until like mid/late ‘08. Myspace’s laziness is what killed it. For it to lose such a huge marketshare to a no-name service like FB boggles the mind.
I say Myspace should start over 100% (kill off all existing users) and do everything FB does already at least 10x better…..if that’s even possible.
I believe there is a cycle for everything… Facebook is killing MySpace the way it killed Friendster the way it killed classmates.com etc. etc.
Will facebook be the king of the social network segment… in my opinion its just a matter of time.. We users have short memory !!! Another good stuff and we will probably dump fb. How many of us use AOL ?
The way Twitter is already killing Facebook. I don’t think TC sees it yet, but Facebook is already bleeding younger users and I’m sure insider’s can see it.
I am one of the MySpace users that left. It just didn’t seem user-friendly enough (actually, I did’t take the time to learn the ropes.) Then I decided t try Twitter. Love it! I am now, also on Facebook; learning the ropes. Will I go back to MySpace? Not sure.
so what is the bottom line? If I have a page on mySpace (I use to have one) – should I remove it and use the face book now? It’s interesting to see all these new type of social aspects. Twitter is another interesting company. http://apps.fac...er-trends-buzz/
Twitter is NOT a social network. It’s a glorified RSS app.
That’s not stopping it from stealing user time from Facebook.
I think Facebook is faking their traffic. There are 200M global uniques in total per month, right? Are they saying that they capture nearly half of that, and they are growing that fast? Seems kind of fishy to me…
MySpace is a company that has never gotten design and it’s finally biting them square in the ass. They’ll need to make big moves quickly in this regard to avert disaster.
Social networking users are the most fickle mofos out there. Jump from one thing to another. We’ll see where facebook is 6 years from now. Better yet we’ll see if social networking is still popular. Today’s world is a mass industry of niche sites.
It’s already too late for MySpace. Nothing can be done now. It’s a lost cause.
I feel that Myspace has the chance to make a turn for the better if only they “clean” up their site a bit. Myspace is a lot easier to use, but not great looking…. think of it like a hooker, you can either go for the fat cheap easy to get with one or the one that looks super hot but cost more to get and harder to work.
Get it?
man..cummon..a hooker analogy? you can do better than that!
I like to view people’s facebook pages without adding them as a friend or switching networks so I have made about a dozen or so accounts and joined different regional networks just to “stalk” others by checking out their facebook page. Up until the regional networks came out, I only had one facebook account (my university acct) but now I have a dozen accounts with regional networks. I think facebook started to suck once it opened up to high school students.
are you a virgin? lol..
We kind of figured this would happen
who is winner ?
Facebook
MySpace might never pass Facebook. But if the losses in unique visitors can level out, isn’t there still room for both?
MySpace is going down? this is interesting
This whole social network fad will go away within the next few years.
My kids are already telling me that facebook and myspace are old hat and now they dont want me and other people seeing what they are up to and have gone back to email, chat and webcams to interact with their friends.
Take this example of poor guy who made the news because he was buying a house in Australia at 18 and others very quickly others found out what he was really up to via his facebook page.
New item:
http://www.news...5013951,00.html
Facebook page where he is admitting to “playing the home owners grant”
http://forum.gl...ost&id=7698
Facebook is better than myspace demond
I think MySpace is not presenting something out of box for users, whereas Facebook is constantly adding new applications etc. Moreover Facebook interface serves the purpose of social networking as well as professional networking.
Sonal Maheshwari
USourceIT your single source for all IT needs
Word is right now that MySpace’s search engine rank takes a backseat to Facebook. Is this right?
@Roy Heidemann
finally i found the like button.
@Kyle Henderson
Why should they mention about twitter. Its nothing related to twitter. Twitter is micro-blogging site. Quite diffrent.
@Shane
If facebook faking the traffic, its not going to take a long time for people to know since that almost everyday theres an attemp to hack facebook.
The time facebook publicly available, people at myspace are so arrogant telling themself “dont do anything, we are giant. No one will beat us”. What we see now, the attitude hits them hard.
There’s no way they can catch up with facebook growth rate unless new revolutionary features invented like what facebook did, 3rd party application ‘thingy’. The earlier they invent a new thing, the better because they are dying now.
I left myspace not long ago and migrated to facebook. Its hard for me because i have a lot of friends there but facebook is even more interesting to use.
Some people say facebook design is crap and the color scheme used is lame and all that. Probably you are the people who dont notice that myspace redesign their page recently after they notice the sign “facebook is chasing me and i have to do something”
It is good to see that Facebook has moved up than MySpace. I would say the extensions like FConnect and badges like Find-Us-On-Facebook creates a great enthusiasm and gets everybody talking. That strategy has seemed to pay well for Fb.
Prasanna.
http://zorpioagency.com
http://twitter.com/zorpio
pretty much myspace is for younger, more obnoxious kids. also the argument presented a little earlier about facebook having too many useless applications, well first off you can block most of them and second myspace apps are way more annoying and harder to block. with that said, facebook should be the king of the social networks, for sometime anyways. as for twitter? i love it but will it beat facebook? probably not. too many of my simple friends don’t even know what twitter is for and once they find out they’re still not too interested in it. twitter is for the hardcore geek and i like it that way better.
my two cents.
will it go through?