Facebook Rises, MySpace Falters

Compete reported today that with 15.7 billion page views, Facebook is now ranked third in terms of traffic, and MySpace, which has thus far enjoyed both healthy growth and a long run as the leader in social networking, is declining and may not be in the lead for long.

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Facebook has grown not only its user-base, but also the time spent per user on the site. At the same time, MySpace, which has been one of the highest ranking sites for about two years now seems to be slowing down in terms of growth (though the existing users continue to use the site quite loyally). So why is MySpace 'stagnating' and Facebook continuing to grow?

It's the platform!

Since releasing the f8 platform, Facebook's growth (as measured by attention metrics) has grown over 50%, with August being the best month yet. As developers create applications that essentially integrate the functionality of other sites into Facebook, it's easy to understand why more users are spending a better part of their time online on Facebook. Not only that, but as they create applications that you have to carefully craft, and that require your daily attention, there is an increasing need to visit the site daily and see how you stack up against others.

That said, it is astonishing that rumors about MySpace's impending launch of a widget platform as well as a developer platform, fail to pan out. Facebook's design, ease-of-use, and (initially) targeted audience certainly helped the site's growth, but it has been clear for a while that the main reason for the site's exponential growth has been the developer platform.

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Reader Comments (5)

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WarriorBlog, September 11, 2007

I really don't understand why Facebook is sooo popular. I signed up and it didn't look like I could even add people I don't know.

I couldn't even add anyone and the main screen looked horrible...

Gerard McGarry, September 12, 2007

Hi Muhammad - You know what's more interesting about those statistics? MySpace creates a lot of unnecessary pageviews just by the way it's designed. If you factor in superfluous pageviews, MySpace doesn't look like such a wonderful platform.

And as for MySpace allowing widget development: they've locked enough third parties out of their system in the past to make developers wary of sudden policy shifts.

csabax, September 12, 2007

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Olivier Serres, September 20, 2007

Hi, nice & interesting post ! What I can confirm from France is that the only social network that kept on growing this summer was Facebook (august 07). Traditionnaly, people usually go on summer holidays during August.

In another category, www.badoo.com also knew a massive subscription. But there's also a small bad buzz about facebook opening profiles to search engine. We describe the phenomena right here : http://www.web-interactif.com/web-20/indexation-des-profils-facebook-quelques-precautions/

Mario Games, March 6, 2010

it's no doubt it FB is king on social network game in today!

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