Facebook Gets More Traffic Than MySpace
For the first time it looks like Facebook has overtaken MySpace as the biggest social network, at least according to ComScore. An article in the Financial Times said that:
Facebook attracted more than 123m unique visitors worldwide in May, an increase of 162 per cent over the same period last year according to ComScore, a company that monitors websites. That compared with 114.6m unique visitors worldwide at MySpace, Facebook’s leading rival, whose traffic grew just 5 per cent during the same period, ComScore said.
The findings mark the first time that Facebook, launched in 2004, has taken a significant lead in unique visitors, after ComScore’s April traffic figures showed the rivals in a virtual tie. They come at a time of change inside Facebook, as the one-time upstart attempts to transform itself into a leading media company. Several members of the original executive team have left the company in recent weeks.
MySpace is still significantly more popular than Facebook among US residents and, with $1 billion in revenue last year, is probably more profitable. Facebook is a private company and doesn’t disclose sales figures but the Financial Times reported it made $150 million worth of sales last year.
MySpace seems to be in a major period of transition. Their web site traffic seems to be peaking and advertising revenue is not at the levels that Fox expected. When people talk about advertising on social networks, they talk about Facebook apps, not advertising on MySpace.
MySpace last week launched a redesigned home page with simpler navigation and less noise after users complained it was difficult to use and featured garish, cluttered profile pages
“We asked people why they didn’t go to MySpace,” MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson told The Guardian. “A lot of people thought it was too hard to use, they thought it was a music site, or a content site. Privacy was a concern, or they’d say it was a site for teenagers.”
Rupert Murdoch the outspoken chief executive of News Corp, which bought MySpace for the now bargain price of $580 million in 2005, said Facebook had “done a great job of being flavor of the month the last six months of last year” but it was not a real social network and was basically a “directory”.
Tags: Facebook, MySpace
Filed under Social Media Marketing :
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Jun 23rd, 2008
June 26th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
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