Date: Thursday, August 2, 2007
Facebook will eclipse Myspace by Autumn
As many had predicted, experts have now released findings that suggest MySpace’s membership will be overtaken by Facebook’s within a couple of months.
It’s newer, fresher, and many say, easier to use, and now Facebook seems to be reaping in the rewards of its top-notch site, with predictions that it will be the market forerunner by September. This comes after MySpace has been continually losing traffic to Facebook in the previous months; in May the UK site membership numbered 6.5 million, a fall from 6.8 million in April of this year, and in the US, where MySpace has its largest amount of members, visitor numbers were down to 56.6 million in May from 57 million in April. In contrast Facebook has seen its membership grow exponentially in the last few months, at nineteen times the rate of MySpace, a rise of 523% in the last six months. Insiders say the owners of MySpace, News Corporation, are worried about the fall in traffic to their site. Measures to combat this such as the introduction in June of MySpaceTV, set to rival YouTube, seem to have done little to stem the tide. Soon after this introduction Facebook also launched a ‘platform’ that allows outside applications to be used on the site, such as photo slideshows and video sharing.
The rise in Facebook’s popularity seems to be down to its perceived more ‘grown-up’ style in contrast to MySpace and the ease with which its features can be used. No doubt the media and peer-group hype that has surrounded Facebook in the last few months have had something to do with it as well. The company who presented the findings, Nielsen/Netratings also believe that consumer ‘promiscuity’, with users belonging to more than one social networking site, is another reason for the beginning of MySpace’s fall from the top. They released figures of 444 000 people from Britain being members of Facebook, MySpace and Bebo in May 2007 to support their findings. Experts believe that if Facebook continues to attract the number of members it has done in the next couple of months, then it will be the forerunner in the market by the autumn.
Source:
Times Online
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