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.
