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Social Networking Stats - MySpace is Annoying, but People Love It

Published by Ben | Filed under SEM / E-marketing

This interesting article in eMarketer “Social Networking Consuming More Time” offers up a few great nuggets of information:

  1. Top 20 Social Networking Sites in the US, Ranked by Attention (% share of attention combined with thousands of monthly visitors). It should come as no surprise that MySpace dwarfed the competition with regards to these numbers. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that MySpace pages take FOREVER to load. Regardless - we’ve been looking for a list like this for some time, and I know Scott will want to see this.
  2. Actions Taken As a Result of Visiting Friends’ Social Network Pages… (things like forward to a friend, following up with a search, etc.). Ultimately, this chart is more compelling to us as marketers because it proves that a presence on these sites helps drive awareness. While this chart doesn’t factor in the US, the UK is included and as eMarketer points out, Web usage is similar enough to draw a comparison.

It’s interesting to watch social networking evolve and the adoption continue to grow. While MySpace is ubiquitous (and TOTALLY ANNOYING TO USE - imho), I know plenty of people who have never even heard of sites like Bebo or Hi5 or Orkut or even Facebook but it’s obvious that the early adopters are heavy users, and actively use the tools available to pass along sponsored content.

August 2nd, 2007


5 Responses to “Social Networking Stats - MySpace is Annoying, but People Love It”

  1. Scott Hendison Says:
    August 3rd, 2007 at 6:48 am

    Yep, great list, thanks. It’s nice to see some factual traffic stats regarding its services. I can’t believe that MySpace still has such a majority. Neary 400% of number two Facebook!

    I’m working on my own list with Brad too, just a quick overview of each service, and a rough idea of how many votes it takes to get to page 1. We just about have it completed and I’ll let you know when it’s posted…

  2. Christian Says:
    August 3rd, 2007 at 8:22 am

    Why do people spend so much time on Myspace? Well, because it takes 2 minutes just for people’s profiles to load up their music, a video, their Flickr widget… yeah, myspace is annoying…

  3. Dave Brown Says:
    August 6th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    MySpace isn’t so bad. I do agree that it takes a long time for profiles to load, but that is why I don’t customize my profile. I recently started using FaceBook and I personally find MySpace to be less visually appealing yet more user-friendly. Furthermore, from a marketing or networking prospective MySpace can’t be ignored. Maybe for B2B sales but it is highly effective for driving traffic to a B2C site. There’s just too many people and it’s too easy to segment them based on demographics, geography, and interests.

  4. Ben Says:
    August 6th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    Dave’s right - there’s no denying the numbers for myspace, and the B2C marketing powerhouse that it can be

  5. Julian Chadwick Says:
    August 7th, 2007 at 3:05 pm

    As a long time user of myspace and having experience with almost all of the top 30 on that list; I believe there are a few reasons why myspace so outpaces the others:

    1) The network of myspace is much larger than the others and therefore the strength of its “network effect” is much greater.

    At present time, there is no boundary seen for it, so it continues to build on itself (only maybe 200 million users and it is just now really getting into Asia).

    2) Myspace is one of the only of these that show that you are actually on it. Therefore, if you are messaging someone and know they are on, you might stay there clicking your inbox for that response (like the elevator button).

    2b) Because it shows when you are on, some people (like myself) who are marketing will leave it on in the background to be noticed–look at the red flashing light, notice me.

    3) Myspace Browsing: I would imagine that most people (especially any newer user) browse profiles there. The default of the results is “last login”. Therefore, if you are randomly adding people for some target (like bands or companies), you will add the people just on. Then, those people log back in to see…and you get the point.

    Lastly, the real advantage facebook has over myspace (besides design and being less spammy) is that it has opened its app up. Since then, coders/programmers everywhere have developed tens of thousands of apps (trimet plugin=nice) for facebook.

    Like firefox, it now has many unpaid employees and they are making a very interesting world there. I spent a good 2 hours one Saturday zoned into the facebook “Where you’ve lived, visited, want to visit” widget before realizing it (it’s cool and fun!). So, I see facebook gaining unless myspace does the same (they won’t anytime soon as their coding is a nightmare).

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