Yesterday we talked about a change in the Facebook Terms Of Service that means Facebook owns your content – forever. And then at a talk I participated in for our local Small Business Chamber here in Savannah yesterday a couple of the panelists shared a little about how their being active on Facebook is leading to direct donations in support of their non-profits.
Facebook passes MySpace for unique visitors.
Facebook Now On Top
In spite of the new TOS changes Facebook is growing at a record pace. In fact, Facebook surpassed MySpace to take over the number 1 spot for social media traffic levels.
You can see by the Compete comparison at the right that Facebook has been growing traffic steadily since last spring while MySpace has been steady to slightly declining over the same period.
According to the published Facebook statistics they currently have over 170 million active user accounts with over 15 million users updating their statuses at least daily. (I’m not one of those 15 million.)
MySpace doesn’t have any published statistical data that I can find. In fact, the only “company” info they have on their website is this very lame “About Us” page which doesn’t say much of anything. Perhaps that is part of what contributes to the general perception that MySpace is for kids. If they don’t bother to even appear to take their business seriously, why should the rest of us?
Real Connections
Personally I’ve never done much of anything with MySpace for myself beyond opening a profile and poking around a fair amount so that I could have an understanding of the platform’s pros & cons when working with clients.
However I am fairly active on Facebook (in spite of my TOS concerns). I probably average checking in on my account about once a day to see what my friends are up to. I figure since so many others are active their it would be irresponsible of me not to. I’ve got over 300 friends there and have connected with folks that I haven’t been in contact with in years. Ok, in some cases it’s more like decades.
If you want to send me a friend request, here is my Facebook profile.
Congratulations to Facebook for becoming the number 1 social media site. It’s a place where we can all make real connections.
Hey Chris,
Frankly, I think FaceBook & Google already know too much for our own good.
I quit FB long ago BECAUSE of their TOS, now they want to own everything forever, just like “G”.
Sorry, but I don’t think a little name exposure is worth “Jumping off the Bridge” just because it everyone else is doing it.
Businesses will still end up DOA or owned by FB&G without the benefit of a buyout.
Just my opinion.
Joe
Hey Joe! It’s been a long time, my friend.
I guess I see the whole thing differently. From a business perspective it makes sense to get in front of as many people as possible. It’s not about stroking my ego. It’s about growing my business.
I can be proud and stay away from Facebook because what they’re doing is wrong. Or I can participate wisely, understanding the “rules” and reach more people to grow my business.
don’t know why but i have facebook i prefered myspace.com. Like probably most people in Europe
I wonder if that will change with the Facebook terms of service changes. I have to say to think they can use any image posted at any point in time for their own means is very disconcerting…
Being in the music and creative content industries for more than a decade, I completely agree that it’s disconcerting.
BUT, I don’t think people care. If Facebook published the stats on views of their TOS, I’d wager we’d be surprised to see how few of those 15 Million daily active users actually have clicked over to it, much less read through the terms.
For written materials, I use an RSS Feed to pull my content from my blog onto FB notes. While not a perfect workaround, the content does not originate on FB this way and I could still claim ownership in a stretch.
Totally true about TOSs – I saw a post on another site where Facebook’s Privacy Officer confirmed that only about 15% of people ever update their security settings on the profile pages
I started out using MySpace and then switched over the Facebook. I prefer Facebook, but am worried about how they might change their terms of service. I for one will not use them if their terms of services causes concern to me. Based on the public outcry, I think there will be lots others as well who will no longer use them.
I dnt know but from my point of view in Europe still Myspace is on top beacuse so many people are use still myspance more rather than Facebook. but if you statment is true then Myspace will must thinking to get top position in social media marketing.
over here in the uk its been on top for about a year now!
One of the beauties about Facebook is that they are responsive to their users. Enough people complain, they make changes. Like you say, Myspace seems to not even take their business seriously nor implement changes to the degree that Facebook does. I used to have myspace, but now I deleted it. As long as facebook doesn’t mess with my privacy (which I know it will try to do) I am happy using it.
In a way, you could say that user feedback and instant connectivity has created a democratic and nearly instant consumer voice. Pretty amazing from a philosophical standpoint.
Personally I don’t like Facebook. I love MySpace and Orkut is sometimes funny too. After all MySpace is the best, I think. I used to use Facebook a little time, but I don’t like it anymore!
In Holland neither Facebook nor MySpace seems to touch any ground. It’s all Hyves over here. I guess those giants have some international territory to overtake!
Some time ago when I saw the statistics, Facebook was far behind Myspace and was growing, but its growing at an astronomical rate now! Number of active users double every six months for facebook and nearly half of the active users visit daily. Also it has become the No.1 photo sharing application on the Web. “FACEBOOK” the clear Social Network Leader.
Hi King,
Thats nice statistics about Facebook and its growth. Here are a few more: Over 7,000 applications have been built on Facebook Platform, 100 new applications added per day, More than 80% of Facebook members have used at least one application built on Facebook Platform.
well the main reason for the ultimate fame of the facebook is the freedom and ease that the beginners feels for it…. but i am also sure of the fact that… after the brawl of owning the content of the user… this overtake is definitely going to take a backseat
In my opinion from your stats you listed it seems myspace does not as organized as facebook. I believe facebook has a better backing in it’s staff and the way it is run. A lot of us saw facebook overtaking myspace in users AND traffic. I think what took so long for this to happen was Facebooks silly ideas of attempting to OWN everyones content. Stuff like that kept them from being #1 but now they are on top finally. Facebook For the Win!
Also…You will find that old college friends will contact you through Facebook as well.
I’m not at all surprised by this – Facebook is just much more organized, easier to navigate and less pushy with ads. I’m actually in support of Facebook
I have facebook account but i don’t like to using that..I love myspace more than facebook.
I still prefer myspace over facebook any day, but I saw this coming a long time ago. What made me realize that facebook was on its way to being number one is the amount of college kids that were flocking to facebook. Myspace didn’t stand a chance. If you can get the young people between the ages of 17 and 25 to flock to whatever you are promoting, then anything you have is going to gain popularity quickly.
It was only a matter of time. The Facebook App is the next frontier
I signed up for Myspace some time ago, poked around for a bit but never bothered making it look spiffy. My wife bugs me a bit about this from time to time as she seems to like it allot. I figure to much work is involved maintaining it and getting it just so not to mention I found it boring. So now I have one that is just a plain default page under different Nickname. I laugh though as I still get friend requests from strangers.
Face book though as I said in a previous comment I will not bother with.
I knew it wouldn’t be too long until Facebook overtook MySpace. I used MySpace for years, and I still do but find myself on Facebook much more and I tend to neglect my personal MySpace page. I do use it a lot for my band and that has shown us amazing results over the last 3 yrs., so for musicians and other entertainers I think MySpace is the winner. I am not sure how long that will last neither as Facebook keeps adding more and more features.
FINALLY!!!! i hate myspace the ugly site!
Congratulations to Facebook. Thanks to Facebook I have reconnected with many of my old friends that I lost touch with while in college. Facebook is a great social tool, I hope they have much more success.
I do find it curious in my point of view, that the transformation of MySpace to Facebook happened around the same time I more or less stopped using MySpace altogether. (I’m sure it has nothing to do with me though!
) It seems that I wasn’t the only one who finally got bored of it at the same time, and found that more and more of my non-internet-addicted friends were signing up on Facebook, so it was a lot more fun to hang out in there.
To me the major turning point of Facebook was the “ignore all” button they added for application invitations that were driving me crazy before.
Myspace is all about spam. Too many self promoting bands and bots.
Well, I think You’ve got a point. With FB we can make a real connection. I’m new in FB and glad to find old friends
Well, I like facebook to see what’s going on with my friends worldwide but what I don’t like is that they want to own “all of your content”.
I agree FB is great for 2 things and that’s connecting with people and growing your business.
Thanks for the post and especially for the graph chart! I am doing some social networking research at the moment and this info is valuable for my research proposal!
Social networking is continuing to explode. It’s going to be interesting to see how MySpace reacts to this.
This is no surprise. Facebook is much better than MySpace. Most of my friends have a profile on Facebook. Bye
Facebook is much better imo for the simple reason of usability. Their platform is simplified with a very classy looking interface that is easy to navigate for every web user. They continue to improve both usability and look while it seems myspace is much more clutter with much less value. My .02 cents.
Congratulations to Facebook. Facebook came about the right time when everyone got fed up of bebo,Hi5 and Myspace. Facebook is a great social tool, I hope they have much more success. Definitely going to stay around for much longer.
FaceBook is easier to use than my space. I have both of thses and I prefer using facebook.
Finally! I’ve always liked Facebook better than MySpace, and finally they are getting the recognition they deserve. Facebook is just easier and more fluid; MySpace has more customization, but in my opinion, way too much. It just makes things cluttered, which is why I don’t even use MySpace.
Facebook has outbeaten it’s competitors since the start due to it’s extensive and advanced apps platform that they have, so that people startted to neglect the terms of service to enjoy the great social media coverage of facebook and it’s wide range of applications
Myspace is on the way down. Too much spam
It was matter of time before Facebook overtakes Myspace. Basically Facebook is better brand with better services than MySpace. Everyone knew this was coming for MySpace.
Facebook and MySpace both have their goods and bads, personally I don’t have account on any of these websites. The number of users on Facebook seems to be very high while they have15 million people changing their status daily.
Well I don’t think any of the web site works well in India; this country is a place for ORKUT. I am also active on Orkut but don’t have time to change my status daily.
According to the number of users on Facebook, It seems to be a world leader and I thing Facebook deserve it.
Part of the reason I prefer facebook over myspace is because of how they are
perceived. There are too many allegations with myspace and less than ideal characters
doing less than ideal activities. I think my personal information is a little
more secure with facebook as well, even though they have been in the news of late
regarding their terms of service. No matter what you do online that covers digital security
issues, privacy issues, etc. is valuable.
My friends thing myspace is similar to bebo, spend too much time trying to make
it look pretty, i like the simple look of facebook, spend more time interacting.
Facebook know is cleaner interface is lot more appealing and easy to navigate, allow you to keep up with your friends in easier way, all the updates are coming automatically.
It was only a matter of time before MySpace got pummeled by Facebook. Just like Friendster, MySpace will die off unless they get in the game and fix a lot of their problems. But in the mean time I’m sticking with FB.
It’s about time…Myspace was being over-run by musicians, models and actors trying to further their career.. it wasn’t about networking with friends but networking for monetary gain.
Facebook is much more personable, people tend to be friends with who they are friends with in real life… at least for the time being, I hope it stays that way.
If you ever have any stubborn people like me, have them call me. I like facebook more and more each day because it makes my life a lot easier. Man, this thing’s getting better and better as I learn more about it.
I originally preferred myspace over FB, however these days i barely login once a month, simply due to the FB popularity explosion. My friends/contacts all migrated so did I. A case of following the crowd i guess.
I still think Myspace has a the upper hand on music and band promotion, so many bands rely heavily on their myspace exposure to succeed… i haven’t the same level of promotion on FB despite the huge popularity increase.
FACEBOOK: Something new will always be an interesting thing to anyone (That’s why they beat MySpace to the number 1 spot)
MYSPACE: Too much advertising will not help unless you will provide new features that people would like to see.
FB made a good impression but who knows until when they would stay in the number 1 spot. As time passes by users of FB will start noticing flaws on FB same thing happened with MySpace. If another website would appear with better features, for sure FB will also drop down. As a matter of fact, people are starting to doubt FB because they don’t listen to users requests or suggestions. If FB will not satisfy user’s needs in the years to come they will start to loose user’s which also happened to MySpace. They might lose their spot to a certain “MyBook” or “FaceSpace” website if that happens.
i would have a time machine so i can learn facebook before facebook’s release time
I still remember, few years ago, Myspace is on the lead. The success of Facebook now is the downfall of Myspace. Usually, the trend will always be what’s in. The only thing Myspace can do is to make something new in their service.
I wonder how long it will be until Facebook becomes overly spammy like MySpace – hopefully never!
Kind of hard to believe seeing as Facebook is like the worst site in the entire world. I don’t think there’s anything that could ever convince me to sign up for and use that site… Myspace forever!
I have a love/hate relationship with FB. I love finding out about what’s up with long ago friends but hate all the junk that goes with it.
Somehow, I am wondering if 1-2 years down the road, we will see a similar headline, but replace facebook with twitter and myspace with facebook.