Forum Moderators: phranque
Online teen hangout MySpace.com ranked as the No. 1 U.S. Web site last week, displacing Yahoo Inc.'s (YHOO) top-rated e-mail gateway and Google Inc.'s (GOOG) search site, Internet tracking firm Hitwise said on Tuesday. Hitwise does not provide figures for the number of unique visitors to a site. MySpace, which dominates social networking on the Web, also gained share in June from other sites that aim to create virtual communities online for sharing music, photos or other interests, Hitwise said. MySpace captured nearly 80 percent of visits to online social-networking sites, up from 76 percent in April. A distant second was FaceBook at 7.6 percent.
Most other trackers and loggers put MySpace 4th or 5th at best. Some put it even lower. Alexa currently has it ranked 4th in the US and 5th in the world.
I remember thinking how in the world was that thing worth the $580 million price tag; shows what I know, with those numbers its looking awfully good.
This social networking stuff is absolutely blowing up. What's unclear is if you can actually make money from it.
Can they really (still) be called a "teen hangout" when the likes of Hollywood uses the site as an advertising vehicle, and Neil Diamond pushes his latest album there?
<embarrassing confession>
When I was a teen, a few years ago, you could have caught me listening to Neil on a 1/4" reel-to-reel...
</embarrassing confession>
I believe that's a part of the tweaking of SERPS lately at Google
I work at a business in a college town USA that has about 60 college students working there. They are on MySpace all the time at work, along with Facebook.
Will somebody please think of the children!
...I'm a few years shy of thirty.
How long before we all have implants at birth with pre-programmed friends?
A more educational & worthwhile site (such as Wiki) should more deservedly be #1 me thinks, but then I guess few people actually get what they deserve.
Some of my friends have a MySpace page, and whenever they mention it I give them the raised eyebrow.
[edited by: Chico_Loco at 8:45 pm (utc) on July 11, 2006]
Ironically Foxnews.com is also owned by the same company that owns MySpace, Newscorp.thats true but I assume this information is correct.
<edited>Hey, you me and Hawkgirl all share the same join date</edited>
[edited by: Iguana at 8:54 pm (utc) on July 11, 2006]
Myspace would now be worth at $2-3 billion. I think its a lot of junk though. Its made up hundreds of thousands of crappy little mini personal sites (I guess they are blogs in many ways). I guess the traffic is the value here because the content is really awful.
A few of my friends have pages, which they think are cool, but if I were to start up my own website at www.myname.com with an interactive guestbook, forums etc, I'd probably be 'sad' or 'have no life', which makes me laugh.
Myspace has had a lot of free publibity here in the UK from some big names. On a 1.5 hour drive I think I heard a certain Radio 1 DJ mention it about 30 times, and how you could leave a message etc. No doubt people flocked to do so.
Still, they've got to be applauded as they seem to have come from almost nowhere.
Is it possible to run a myspace campaign that produces decent conversion?
Just a thought.
I don't think that I need to say any more.
Actually, not anymore. They recently got into the enterprise market. Now, there's a number of big companies whose employees have access to a Facebook property.
The interesting thing is thing is that Facebook didn't do Bizdev through those companies to get permission, they just turned it on.
So now, if you have a @microsoft.com email address, you can sign up for a facebook account and connect with your coworkers.
Don't think they are not there.
What you may think you see, is not always what it appears to be.
Many people in the music industry use it as a way to communicate with each other, in incognito.
I'm mates with one of them, who was a Brit Award winner one year and they love it, they won the best ****** solo artist.
So look again at what you see..
What I think myspace really has going for them is all these TV stations that are pushing myspace so hard. I don't know if any of you guys watch TNT or USA, FOX, or several other networks. But a lot of the new and existing TV shows have myspace groups as their fan page, bringing in a ton of people who may not even care much about the social networking part of it.
As for the conversion, truthfully I was under the impression that social networking sites are ALWAYS geared towards branding. The average user views an insane amount of pageviews while logged in, so if you want to do branding this is definately an effective way of getting things across.
So I have to ask someone in the know. Why do people make their way to this site more than once? Is it like web hosting for the non-technical?
Is it like web hosting for the non-technical?
yes
Also imagine a place where you can contact everybody in your industry, music scene, club, interest group, etc
Its not just about all those terrible personal websites that are there.
Its a one-stop contact mecachanism, for many in the various music scenes.
Personally I don't think they are doing anything new, but when a site brings together lots of old things, something new can be created.
I sound like an advert now, I actually do not like it at all, but there are lots that do.
[edited by: nicedude at 12:22 am (utc) on July 12, 2006]
If you sign up and join a few groups you can browse members, for example browing my local group I see loads of people I used to go to school with.
But then I could go for a walk and see loads of people I used to go to school with.
Long term I just don't think this sort of site can survive.
Mack.
