Comments for Latest SNS Numbers - MySpace Streaks Ahead

Latest SNS Numbers - MySpace Streaks Ahead

2006-01-09T23:52:42Z

A USA Today article reveals that MySpace has now reached 47.3 million members. The Blog Herald also reports that MySpace "is growing by an amazing 160,000 new users a day, according to MediaPost".

USA Today gives a rundown of numbers for SNS sites, c/o comScore Media Metrix. They note that "in the past year, the number of visitors to MySpace (from homes, workplaces and colleges) has skyrocketed, making it the Web’s top social networking site":

MySpace.com
Nov. 2004: 4.9 million
Nov. 2005: 26.7 million

Facebook.com
Nov. 2004: N/A
Nov. 2005: 11.1 million
Xanga.com
Nov. 2004: 5.8 million
Nov. 2005: 7.9 million
Bebo.com
Nov. 2004: N/A
Nov. 2005: 1.5 million
Friendster.com
Nov. 2004: 966,000
Nov. 2005: 1.5 million
Tribe Networks Inc.
Nov. 2004: 62,000
Nov. 2005: 515,000
Linkedin.com
Nov. 2004: 123,000
Nov. 2005: 354,188
Orkut.com
Nov. 2004: N/A
Nov. 2005: 83,000
Source: comScore Media Metrix, a division of comScore Networks, Inc.

For some reason, USA Today didn't include LiveJournal in their chart. According to official stats, LiveJournal currently has 9 million user accounts - but only a little under 2 million are "active". That would put LJ at number 3 or 4 in the above chart.

The demographics of SNS sites are interesting. LiveJournal users are skewed to 16-20 years and are 2/3 female. MySpace is said to be mostly < 22 yrs and general consensus is that it's a younger user base than LJ.

All of these SNS services have a very young user base, so in many ways it's a battle for the hearts and minds of Generation Y and beyond. MySpace may be winning in numbers, but recent controversy shows they can't get complacent.

Comment from Tim on 2006-01-09

2006-01-10T00:29:13Z

Hmm. It's interesting that Myspace which is owned by a media company is getting the press. The Orkut numbers are wrong for sure and as somebody who is living in Brazil, I can tell you first hand the stuff going on here with Orkut is insane. Brazilians love Orkut for some reason and there are a lot of them.

The Orkut numbers are wrong.

Comment from Kurt Schrader on 2006-01-09

2006-01-10T01:47:07Z

The traffic numbers for MySpace are astounding. I have to wonder though, at what point does "popular" become "too popular" and all of the cool kids move on to something else?

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2006-01-09

2006-01-10T02:45:23Z

Tim, you may have a point there. I suspect the Comscore numbers are US-only.

Comment from Matt on 2006-01-09

2006-01-10T03:09:32Z

Of the "amazing 160,000 new users a day", at least 100,000 are marketers.

Comment from Marcelo Calbucci on 2006-01-09

2006-01-10T03:16:34Z

Those numbers are interesting, but wrong.
Orkut has at least 12 million members WW and about 1.2 million in the US.

MySpace doesn't have 47.3 million "members". It has 47.3 million *sites* and that is a huge difference. Sites might be idle, created by bots or are just spam.

MySpace is definitely the most popular and the most amazing phenomenon of the web for a long time. But there are many, many sites with 2 or 3 times more real users than MySpace, like MSN Messager, Hotmail, Yahoo Messenger, etc.

Comment from Markus Frind on 2006-01-11

2006-01-11T09:10:03Z

Comscore and nielsons numbers are a joke. I forced my users to uninstall them as they are bundled with spyware. Major banks also stopped allowing people to login because they had comscore installed. So the average comscore and nielson user is someone who isn't computer savy, and is into filesharing networks.

At any rate, nielson and comscore report my traffic around 140,000 uniques a month. Google analyitics puts it at 2+ million uniques a month, hitwise.com (parses browsing habits of 20 million US web users) shows my site as being around ~70 to 90~ most pageviews in the USA.

So take all these traffic stats with a grain of salt.

Comment from Gary on 2006-01-11

2006-01-12T00:56:54Z

>>MySpace is definitely the most popular and the most amazing phenomenon of the web for a long time. But there are many, many sites with 2 or 3 times more real users than MySpace, like MSN Messager, Hotmail, Yahoo Messenger, etc.

I'm pretty sure MySpace has more members than MSN Messenger and Hotmail. Yahoo might have more accounts overall, but Yahoo 360 and Y! Messenger just aren't as popular.

Comment from Jonathan on 2006-01-11

2006-01-12T02:47:24Z

I think that not only are Orkut numbers real, but its users are not as fickle. My wife has a community she runs there that has gained almost 600 actively posting members. She also finds and gets caught up with friends from her school years. These members not only take the time to write each other, but 2 couples have visited us and I met another in Brazil over the break. From one angle, my American cousin is staying in Rio to see what its like to live there, and this week I managed to personally introduce him to 3 people in Rio through Orkut alone. And from yet a different angle, my brother-in-law is from Salvador Brasil and is meeting new girls like crazy on a daily basis.

Orkut hit a nerve with a particular culture on various fronts. Evolving its capabilities and studying its users' behavior could amount to the kind of modern and valuable behavior marketing data that Starmedia obtained in the late 90s. It would behoove this Google owned asset to fix its site up and figure out how to really serve these people and discover what they really need and want.

Comment from Nathan on 2006-01-15

2006-01-15T16:12:00Z

I agree with Markus, these stats companies are not worth anything. Even google analytics is off by 20-30% for us.

MySpace is getting a lot of radio play. The biggest two radio's in my area have djs that tell members/users to visit their myspace page. On top of that it is owned by a global media company, so to get the word out isn't that hard.