myspace

Today we pulled up good old Alexa rankings and we want to share what we found. Facebook has finally passed mySpace in monthly pageviews. It looks like they are pretty even as it has crossed back over the line (with mySpace leading again). With the growth trajectory of facebook however, we can expect that facebook may take the lead for good. That is unless myspace does something amazing to stimulate their growth.

We think the facebook platform and social graph is a lot more solid than mySpace. For one, facebook's "real people" social graphs are much more long term. You get your friends linked in and no one is really going anywhere. With mySpace, we get bored easily. For one, you don't really have to reveal who you are and your "friends" are much more superficial. It is kind of a race for fake friends on mySpace. Facebook, you add your real friends more slowly but it seems like more sustainable long term growth as new people get invited and then expand their "real life" social graphs.

That is our take on things anyway.

As you have been probably reading, Google has launched their API for their new Open Social developer's platform for social networks.  MySpace, Hi5, LinkedIn, Orkut, Ning and a raft of other social networks are already on board and ready to "gang up" on facebook.  Well, they are trying to but will it work?  Don Dodge has a good article up for the facebook camp.  Bloggers around the net have been saying that it is a game changer for members of social networks.  We think it is a game changer, but not for the users of social networks, for the app developers.  

App developers will now probably focus their energies on BOTH facebook and Open Social.   The 50 million users of facebook are considered to be "real people" and one of the most accurate networks.  This is not to be ignored and these people that have invested time and energy to build their networks on facebook are not about to jump ship and do it all over again on Orkut, Hi5 or any other network.  They are there to stay.  So, the only thing that has changed is for application developers who will get access to multiple social networks with one code base (through Open Social).  

Furthermore, the Open Social API is in early beta and there seems to be some issues.  Also, it is not even live yet, developers can only play in the "Orkut sandbox" to build and test their apps.  There is a great article here that details Open Social vs. the facebook f8 platform .  If you are a developer, you should read it for sure. 

You might find this interesting.. facebook is now number 4 in the world for page views per month (in September 2007), of ALL sites!  Only Yahoo!, MySpace and Google top facebook now. 

The numbers are from comScore Media Metrix (but we got the graph from Valleywag's Orkut article as we don't have a comScore account! Thx Valleywag).

Also, a surprise, Google's Orkut is number 5 just after facebook.  If we combine Google and Orkut (Google owns Orkut) then Google becomes number one with approx 67 billion page views, then Yahoo, MySpace and then our beloved facebook would come in number 3.  Or we could also combine Live.com and MSN (both Microsoft) and facebook moves back to number 4.  Which ever way you dice the numbers, facebook is serving up the fourth most page views in the world, each and every month.  Impressive. 

Following up on the last post, we know there is a huge race race going on between the social networking sites. We decided to do a little rundown on five of the main competitors and their page view stats from Alexa.

MySpace . With more than 200 million users and with one of the highest usage minutes per day, myspace is the leader (ok this is disputed by many but lets give them the benefit for now). As you can see it is also the leader in page views. For now, that is. Facebook is catching up very quickly and if the trends continue it will be a matter of months before facebook will overtake myspace. The myspace application platform has been announced now and we think developers aren't going to be able to resist the chance to get access to 200 million users. Even if the site is flash, tacky and horrible looking. 200 million pairs of eyes. Wow.

Bebo . Can't see their stats? ‘Nuff said. Ok, no seriously, they are the flat yellow line at the bottom. Although it doesn't look rosey for bebo from the page view stats, they have a huge following in the UK and they claims to be the largest social networking site in the there, Ireland and New Zealand. They also claim to have 35 million users. They have inked various partner deals with yahoo, apple and skype. Don't count them out yet... but they better get some growth going to catch up to the leaders of the pack. Oh, and they have $15 in VC capital, which is a pittance compared to the deep pockets of newscorp, google and facebook.

Hi5 . Has been a huge hit almost everywhere in the world other than the USA. Their strategy of providing multiple languages and an easy to use platform has paid off in the form of 70 million users. As you can see by the graph, they have been climbing steadily alongside facebook for the last six months. The other networks don't have the language capability and are all mostly English only. Ok, myspace is venturing into new countries, but there has been low adoption rates for most of those ventures. They now have a beta API for developers and they will be a serious contender if they keep doing things right.

Orkut . Is a bland offering that is happily going along with about 30 million users. The stats say that traffic has dropped off in the last 2 months a bit but it doesn't really matter. They will be a contender. Why. Google owns them of course. They have piles of cash and have also announced that they will open up their social graph and access to their users via a ‘facebook like' platform. They have the cash to fight it out and once they start integrating the social graph into the rest of the google apps... they are going to have some SERIOUS functionality and the social graph. Orkut is the dark horse that will likely step up and run a great if not awesome long term race.

Facebook . The graph says it all. They are the fastest growing social network in town at the moment. Everyone has been reading about it, discussing it and joining up to get hooked up with old friends and new. This is not a fad, old and young alike are joing by the millions to see what this facebook thing is about. Some may say throwing sheep and turning your friends into zombies is stupid but that will wear thin after a while. Whatever the naysayers say, facebook's f8 developer platform is a runaway success and the other guys are racing to build one too and lure the builders of all the applications for their users to interact. As we know, there are deal talks going on with several very large companies going on right now. If one of these mega deals goes through, facebook will sell a small portion of the company and have a HUGE warchest of cash to keep the growth rolling. We like it so much for the long term, we started a whole website about it!

Yes, we know there are lots of sites that have been left out, leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments and we may write about the other ones later!