An introductory comparison of (mostly) Facebook and MySpace
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1. User demographics-quantitative
Nielsen September year comparisons of social networks
Top 10 Social Networking Sites for September 2007 (U.S., Home and Work)
Site
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Sep-06 UA (000)
|
Sep-07 UA (000)
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% Change
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Myspace.com
|
47,189
|
58,581
|
24%
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Facebook
|
7,765
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18,090
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133%
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Classmates Online
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13,291
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13,313
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0%
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Windows Live Spaces
|
7,782
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10,275
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32%
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AOL Hometown
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9,997
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7,685
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-23%
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Reunion.com
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4,712
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4,845
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3%
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LinkedIn
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1,762
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4,075
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131%
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AOL People Connection
|
6,096
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4,017
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-34%
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Club Penguin
|
1,333
|
3,769
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183%
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Buzznet.com
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1,061
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3,737
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252%
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comScore World Metrix comparison stats
Total Unique Users, Worldwide, Home/Work Locations, Age 15+
|
...
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June 06
|
...
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June 07
|
...
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% change
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MySpace
|
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66,401,000
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114,147,000
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72
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Facebook
|
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14,083,000
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52,167,000
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270
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Bebo
|
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6,694,000
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18,200,000
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172
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Daily Visitors, Worldwide, Age 15+
|
...
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June 06
|
...
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June 07
|
...
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% change
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MySpace
|
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16,764,000
|
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28,786,000
|
|
72
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Facebook
|
|
3,742,000
|
|
14,917,000
|
|
299
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Bebo
|
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1,188,000
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4,833,000
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307
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Allfacebook.com [[
http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/10/facebook-secretly-reveals-demographic-data/#|Nick O'Neill]] on October 19th, 2007
Currently, there are almost 20 million people in the United States on Facebook. Just over 8 million have specified that they are male and almost 10 million have specified that they are female. Almost half of the entire population on Facebook have specified that they are single. There are almost 1 million users that are between the ages of 35 and 60 in the United States, whereas the same age bracket in Canada accounts for over 1.5 million users. The vast majority of Facebook users are still in the 18 to 35 age bracket. Chris Kennedy, an employee of Rock the Vote, pointed out to me that “at Rock the Vote, for example, we can now track the number of 18-29 year-olds in the US who identify as liberal or conservative and monitor changes over time that may indicate a shift in the political identity of young Americans.”
2. User demographics-qualitative
Danah Boyd Collection of publications, installations, presentations and workshop papers
here.
Viewing American class divisions through Myspace and Facebook. "Most teens who exclusively use Facebook are familiar with and have an opinion about MySpace. These teens are very aware of MySpace and they often have a negative opinion about it. They see it as gaudy, immature, and "so middle school." They prefer the "clean" look of Facebook, noting that it is more mature and that MySpace is "so lame." What hegemonic teens call gaudy can also be labeled as "glitzy" or "bling" or "fly" (or what my generation would call "phat") by subaltern teens. Terms like "bling" come out of hip-hop culture where showy, sparkly, brash visual displays are acceptable and valued. The look and feel of MySpace resonates far better with subaltern communities than it does with the upwardly mobile hegemonic teens. This is even clear in the blogosphere where people talk about how gauche MySpace is while commending Facebook on its aesthetics. I'm sure that a visual analyst would be able to explain how classed aesthetics are, but aesthetics are more than simply the "eye of the beholder" - they are culturally narrated and replicated. That "clean" or "modern" look of Facebook is akin to West Elm or Pottery Barn or any poshy Scandinavian design house (that I admit I'm drawn to) while the more flashy look of MySpace resembles the Las Vegas imagery that attracts millions every year. I suspect that lifestyles have aesthetic values and that these are being reproduced on MySpace and Facebook.
Charlene Croft The following is the “findings” and “interpretation” from my forthcoming: “Which Web 2.0: Facebook, MySpace and why context matters” which I will be presenting at the “Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0″ Conference. "On Facebook, this feeling of connectedness has much to do with connection to the user’s past; 77% of Facebook users agreed with the statement “If it wasn’t for Facebook I probably wouldn’t interact with old friends”. Further, 30% of Facebook users indicated that their main reason for signing up to the site was to get back into contact with old friends, compared to only 8% of MySpace users who indicated the same....Of the users who maintained profiles on both MySpace and Facebook, an overwhelming majority indicated that they preferred Facebook. This was seen at both the quantitative and qualitative levels.
Charles Miller
On Social Networks Social networks are graphs of interest and trust. As such they are natural conduits for the flow of information2. Anyone looking to write social software has to either build their own network from scratch, or build on top of someone else’s. This is why Facebook’s API is such a smart (and successful) move. Facebook give away access to a valuable resource, their users, and in return third party application developers provide more reasons for users to keep coming back to Facebook’s site.
3. Features comparisons
The race for users. Facebook hints 10-18-07 at
more adswhile MySpace nixes some ads, but announces a
new platform and third party api capability to compete with Facebook. Facebook
opened up its platform to third party developers (May 07 with its at the time 24 million users) to compete with MySpace. MySpace announces a new focus on
fashion.
4. Humanities Content
*This part of my presentation is in slides. After the session, I'll annotate them and add a link here.
5. Brief Histories
Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites by Danah Boyd ©2006
Inside Myspace.com by ©2007
Facebook: The Complete Profile,
An in-depth profile of Facebook, written by Mashable contributor Sid Yadav and edited by Pete Cashmore on
mashable
A brief history of Facebook Sarah Phillips reports on the development of Facebook, from a Harvard social-networking website to a global internet phenomenon in the Guardian
6. More Reading
Myspace
mashable,
wikipedia del.icio.us
Facebook
mashable,
wikipedia del.icio.us
Bebo
mashable,
wikipedia del.icio.us
Google
On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.
NYT 10/31
7. Unordered, random factoids
10-07 Our survey this year of 90,000 applicants to Canadian colleges and universities found that fully 75% use Facebook regularly -- rather more than in the US -- but interestingly fewer than HALF thought it was "appropriate" for universities to create a presence on Facebook. Those findings, and focus groups with Facebook users, compelled us to create a new Facebook application, "
SkoolPool," that allows prospective students to indicate the institutions they are considering, compare notes with their friends -- and of course, to provide an ongoing stream of real-time data on applicant behaviours and perceptions.
--Ken Steele
, Senior Vice-President, Education Marketing, Academica Group Inc.
Wikispaces
About the Table of Contents
