MySpace Is Going Down

The signs are there: Facebook is slowly but surely overtaking MySpace and it's only a matter of time until MySpace goes the way of Friendster. While some claim that Friendster isn't dead yet and shouldn't be written off, the signs seem pretty clear to me that, at least in the US, Friendster isn't even on the social networking map. Just click on "share this" at the bottom of that post I just linked to--the one claiming Friendster is still a viable competitor to Facebook and MySpace. Do you see icons for Facebook and MySpace? Yes. Now how about Friendster? I rest my case.

I will give you that he's talking about global and I'm talking about domestic, so he makes a good case for Friendster's viability in a world-wide sense. However, I maintain that it's a no-contest here in the US, especially among the newly minted social media users--any mention of Friendster would most likely elicit a "huh?"

Rather than me taking the time to summarize the current demographics of Facebook, MySpace and Friendster, you can check out the results page for each in Quantcast. Quantcast is a site that allows you to look up demographic information for basically any site. (or maybe not every site--I guess you can try it and see.)

Actually, I take that back about the summaries and making you do it yourself: here are the total monthly US users (at the time of this post) for each of these sites:

• MySpace: 68.2M


• Facebook: 56.2M


• Friendster: 2.2M

Yes, MySpace is still ahead of Facebook, but refer back to the first link in this post; the time is fast approaching when Facebook will overtake MySpace. Then read Danny Brown's post about job cuts at Fox Interactive Media, MySpace's parent company. Then place your bets about when MySpace will be swallowed by Facebook.

Writer's Block=Link Time

I don't know what's up with me but I'm just drawing a blogging blank these days. But I've been reading plenty of stuff, so rather than continue my blogging dry spell, I'll at least steer you to some good posts other people are writing.

• My favorite new blog, Inside Facebook. Great--albeit pretty geeky--information about all things Facebook--new applications, stats, marketing. Well worth checking out and subscribing to.


• Excellent case study about Sprint and how they're using social media to transform their image--since, as Justin Goldsborough, communications manager for social media at Sprint, puts it, they "haven’t exactly set the world on fire when it comes to customer service in the past." Amen to that. But go Justin and his colleagues, and good case study.


• Awesome cautionary tale about watching what you say in public online spaces. Dude from Ketchum goes to talk to the execs at FedEx about social media and ends up making a huge social media gaffe resulting in one of the best dressing-downs I've ever read. And trust me, I'm a fan of the dressing-down email myself, and can appreciate a quality rip when I read one.

I'm going to leave it at that since I don't know how long my blogging draught will last so I need to keep some tricks up my sleeve for future reference.

It's A New Day for New Media Too

Today is a new day for Americans for an obvious reason--the first ever African-American President, a new sense of hope after what has felt to many like an 8-year free-fall, and just an overall feeling of happiness and excitment at a time when many people have little else to feel happy or excited about. But enough said about that--there are thousands of bloggers out there who are, at this moment, writing about the inaguration much more eloquently than I could so I'll leave it at that. Except for this: Obama you ROCK and I'm so psyched that you're finally in the house!!

But you know my one-track mind never strays far from my fixation with social media, and today, to me, is an historical day for social media too. In years past, the inauguration went down like this: you could be one of the lucky few (thousand) to be able to attend the festivities in person, you could watch it on TV, you could listen to it on the radio and you could read about it the next day in the paper.

Today, however--wow. First thing I did when I woke up was turn on the TV to see what's going on down at the mall. Had to surf around for a few minutes--somehow we fell asleep watching something on the channel that Jerry Springer is on at 9 am, so I got momentarily distracted with that. Then turned to one of the major news channels and got commercials. Ditto another. Then finally found a station actually covering the event--a reporter was talking about how Obama doesn't drink alcohol and his favorite comic is Spiderman. Interesting, but what I really want to know is how cold is it downtown, how traffic is, how many roads are closed or blocked off--you know--news about the actual event.

Then I checked my phone--no voice messages (thankfully; I am not a big phone-talker), but an email from my husband telling me that CNN will be streaming live video of the festivities on Facebook all day, and a twitter stream full of tweets about the inauguration: some from people who were downtown at that moment, some from people heading into DC, and some from people who were stuck at work but tweeting their thoughts about the event anyway. You can check out the #inaug09 twitterstream to see just how many people tweeted about the experience and what they were saying.

Then I surfed on over to the news sites: CNN.com was offering not only traditional coverage (albeit enhanced with multimedia features such as video, photos and a reader poll about their take on today's festivities: historic or overhyped?), but their iReport section featuring user-generated stories, videos, photos, and blog posts. Not to mention, of course, the streaming video on Facebook. Washingtonpost.com had, in addition to its regular content, two reporters "Twittering," a reader photo pool on Flickr, and a live blog. And msnbc.com's traditional offerings were augmented with reader photos, videos and stories.

Here's the thing: there's no way traditional media could capture this day in the 630° fashion all these user-generated and multimedia features make possible. Take the streaming video thing on CNN: while live video is nice, live video that's enhanced with your Facebook friends' real-time commentary--well, to quote MasterCard's ads: priceless.

And here's the other thing: if today doesn't prove the extent to which social media has gone mainstream, I don't know what will. What does this mean for association folks like me? This is what members are coming to expect in their daily lives; how long can we really continue to kid ourselves that they'll remain content with our traditional one-way communications to them?

Facebook Demographic Is Growing Older Every Day

According to iStrategyLabs, "a digital agency focused on providing clients with interactive strategy, experiential marketing and content creation services,"
Facebook’s "older" demographic is growing at an exponential rate. According to their 2008 data, the 35-54 year old segment grew 172.9% in 10 months. Their newly-updated data for 2009 shows a 276% Growth in 35-54 Year Old Users.

Further insights from iStrategyLabs:

• The 55+ demo is growing at a rate of 194.3%


• The 25-34 year population is doubling every 6 months


• The largest demographic remains 18-24 year olds (40.8%), but that percentage decreased markedly (53.8%) over the last 6 monts.

Watching Old Media Die, One Tweet At A Time

I've blogged about it before: old media is dying. A few days ago, Brian Solis had a great, statistics-laden post documenting "the looming exit of print newspapers as a primary source of national and international news."

Don't want to take the time to read either one of those posts? Or just don't believe it? Just follow @themediaisdying on Twitter and you'll be able to experience the real-time demise of traditional media.

Scary.