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When I saw a friend invite from Brian Prince today, I thought “wow, maybe it’s time to check Facebook’s traffic standings” and did a quick check on Alexa. Sure enough, as I predicted about this time last year, Facebook (now six) has eclipsed MySpace (now seven), albeit slightly, and temporarily - for now - in the Alexa rankings.
A quick search around the Blogosphere showed me that a few other people had already reported the shift, which looks like it officially took place last week. There were a few things about the stats though that I thought were worth mentioning that I hadn’t seen mentioned elsewhere.
The first is to note the difference in the countries the users come from. In the US, myspace is still the winner. But, Facebook is kicking myspace ass in places like the UK (as Dave noticed a while back), Canada, Egypt, South Africa and more.
See the chart below for a more side by side comparison (the OC stands for other countries which is appears a stat is lumped into if the percentage isn’t at least 0.6%). Myspace wins are in blue and Facebook in purple… yes, I know this isn’t an exact science, but as their so close in Alexa rank, it was worth looking at.
Additionally, take a look at the rankings in the sample countries of both Facebook and myspace when compared to that of Internet giants Google.com and Yahoo.com.
Another interesting thing to check out was the percentage of visitors to Facebook as stated by Alexa vs. the percentage of Facebook’s combined “55 million active users” in each of those countries based on Facebook’s statistics from its social ad service.
But all in all, it would seem Facebook hasn’t eclipsed myspace for very long. According to the end of the graph when shown as a one month graph, you can see Facebook dips below myspace again.
Nonetheless, I’m sure myspace, and its owners, weren’t too happy to see the temporary pass. The question is, how does myspace compete to retain their number one ranking in the social space… if they even can. My other question is with Facebook being a top destination, why haven’t they partnered with a search engine ala CNN to make money on the search ads…
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Being Canadian I definitely question who uses MySpace anymore. Pretty much everyone I know uses Facebook these days. I think the only people using MySpace anymore are bands and corporations. Now that Facebook is posturing to get into that market MySpace will probably start trending downward. One of the reasons I lost interest in MySpace was because of the proliferation of bands and movie promotion that was going on. I can only wonder if Facebook wants to get into everything MySpace is into, will there be a next service that will come along offering an alternative to all that promotional crap?
I never liked Myspace… but it was mainly due to it being gawdy and impossible to understand. I took to Facebook right away. That said, I do hope Facebook finds the balance between monetization and keeping their users happy.
Interesting and insightful statistics regarding the ongoing social network battle between Facebook and MySpace.
Rae - thanks for the comment on BB and FB back on my blog.
Re: this posting - I haven’t looked, but have you compared data from Compete.com vs the Alexa data? Tends to be more accurate. Of course they’re from Boston, so I’m biased… :)
I actually did check out compete - but it was only showing October and was slow… as… hell… that night :) - I like compete quite a bit, but I don’t think their numbers are any more accurate that alexa’s (which I know aren’t super accurate) - at least based on what I know the visitor counts are for my sites and what compete says they are :)
I don’t think myspace has a chance at retaining their rank, for one primary reason.
People move from myspace to facebook, but very rarely seem to move the other direction. At least in my generation(college age).
Most people I know got tired of myspace, which is understandable. For a bit there, the spam. Beyond that, music playing whenever you load a profile, obnoxious, hard to use layouts, it’s just all a bit much.
From there, they went to Facebook, and I have yet to see one go back.
Reasons why myspace is losing traction (for me, at least)
1. Constant promos and obnoxious, blinking garbage on the homepage. No, I don’t want a “zwinky.” Whatever the hell that is.
2. “Cool New People” usually has at least one presidential candidate - the same one for several days at a time. I know it was probably staged before, but please allow me to maintain my denial. Yet another reminder you have sold out, myspace.
3. Eyesore profiles…even by my own friends. Half of them don’t even design their own - instead, they got something seizure-inducing at i’m-too-lazy-to-make-a-halfdecent-layout.com. Much respect has been lost. And country music like “friends in low places” as your profile song? Blech.
4. Creepy proliferation of baby pictures by aforementioned friends. Yes, you have kids. Ok, they’re cute - especially in that Google onesie I bought them. I don’t need to see 100 pics of them.
This is getting to be quite a list…maybe I should start my own blog … it will be titled “why myspace has lost my respect”
Interesting statistics, A lot of people have switched to Facebook including myself.
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