Facebook Powers Past MySpace in June

Marketing Charts: Facebook Powers Past MySpace in June

As expected, unique visitors to social networking site Facebook have finally and decisively eclipsed those of longtime rival MySpace and continue to grow both in the US and abroad, according to figures from comScore, reports MarketingVox.

In May 2009, Facebook’s unique visitor count, as calculated by comScore, caught up to MySpace and surpassed it by a small margin. By June, Facebook hit 77 million unique visitors, representing a significant rise from May’s 70.28 million uniques - and leaving MySpace’s 68.4 visitors in the dust, TechCrunch wrote.

June data from Hitwise revealed that Facebook now holds 32% share of the US social networking market, compared with 29% for MySpace, while figures from Compete.com - which are calculated using a different methodology than comScore’s, have Facebook passing MySpace in unique visitors back in December 2008. ...

Move to Facebook “White Flight”

In more alarming news about MySpace, Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society,  said young Americans’ migration from MySpace to Facebook is causing potential social divisions and could lead to more serious societal problems.

Boyd said  she has observed more white, upper-class and college-bound teenagers switching to Facebook, while less educated and nonwhite teenagers stay on or move to MySpace.  “What we’re seeing is a modern incarnation of white flight,” she is quoted as saying in a New York Times blog post. “It should scare the hell out of us.” ...

Comments

[Travis Greene]

I find the comparison to white flight stupid. Social networking isn't at all analagous to physical living locations, if only for the very obvious reason that you can (as many do) have both a MySpace and Facebook account, at a cost of exactly zero dollars.

[codepoke]

Hmmm. This is interesting. I clicked through to the article, the NYTimes Blog, and the whitepaper that started it all.

The data looks legit and complete. The problem is demonized as white flight, and that's not without helpful connotation. Even white flight was more complex than the boogie-man reference evokes, though.

The thing is, there's no property value to a Facebook page like there is to a home.

I think the people left on MySpace just aren't tuned in enough to know they're behind the power curve. Facebook is eventually going to win everyone, but thought leaders among the uneducated just still think MySpace is pretty cool. There's nothing about Latinos signing up on MySpace that inherently drives college grads to Facebook.

So, without Travis' boldness, I think I'm agreeing. This should not terrify us.

[Michael W. Kruse]

I'm with both of you guys but I wanted to see how others respond. There are no barriers to anyone joining Facebook are trapping people at MySpace. What I think is possible is that people are sorting themselves along some demographic traits.

[Travis Greene]

There probably are demographic traits involved, since that's the whole point. Nobody wants to join a social network none of their friends are on. If all your friends have MySpace pages instead of Facebook pages, that's what you'll sign up with.

The real misunderstanding I see in the "white flight" fear is in how these things actually work. You don't join a social network to meet people and make connections. You join a social network to recreate the social network that already exists, the one made of your friends, family, and acquaintances. Any demographic split between MySpace and Facebook (which I don't doubt, just as there probably was one between various instant messaging services or chatrooms in the days of Ye Olde AOL) is merely an artifact of the already pretty segregated lives most Americans lead.