Change of Power: Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook compared
Today we’ll take a quick look at three of the most talked about social media sites on the planet.
Up until not too long ago, Myspace was pretty much the king of the hill. Facebook, LinkedIn and many similar sites have been around for some time but none of them managed to attract as much attention, users, and financing as Myspace.
Myspace, while still showing impressive user numbers, is no longer then only big kid on the block. Facebook and Twitter are now the most talked about sites and we’ll explore why this might be and what this could mean for your future web projects.
ALEXA RANKINGS
While not always entirely accurate, Alexa’s site details do give us a good idea of current trends on the web.
Comparing traffic on Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook, between December 2008 and May 2009 we see that Twitter made by far the biggest gains. Twitter is the 49th most popular site on the web at the time of this writing and if it can maintain its momentum it could easily be in the top 15 sites on the web before year end.
Facebook made some gains but nowhere near what Twitter is seeing now. Myspace, as expected, has dropped in traffic. Not by much but every visitor counts when your business model is advertising driven.
BRAND BECOMES A VERB
Virtually everybody is talking about Twitter – “twitter” has become a verb. Once your brand becomes a verb you are about to, or very recently have, reached what Malcolm Gladwell would call the Tipping Point. To google” is a famous recent example.
“To skype” means to use Voice Over IP telephony service Skype to make phone calls. “To photoshop” means to use Photoshop or any similar image editing program, to alter one or more images.
It’s not absolutely necessary for your brand to become a verb. “To myspace” never caught on because Myspace isn’t easily associated with one or two easily explained actions. Google has the user type in keywords. Twitter has the user type in short message of 140 characters or less and send them out to her followers (subscribers).
If your brand is more complicated than that, chances are slim your brand will gain verb status. But that’s okay.
KEY TO GROWTH: SNEEZERS
Here is one of the keys many branding guys and girls sometimes forget about: you need the right people talking about your brand/site/product. Marketing guru Seth Godin calls them Sneezers.
Sneezers are well connected, on purpose or not. When they recommend a site, people in their network pay attention. One could consider the media to be the biggest sneezer of all: when Oprah talked about Twitter on her show, millions of potential users (customers, if you’re selling a product or service) were exposed to the concept of it.
Naturally, a large chunk of viewers flocked to Twitter and signed up, just to see what Oprah is talking about.
The “Oprah Effect” is every marketer’s dream, so is being mentioned on popular TV shows such as Leno, The Daily Show, and fictional shows such as CSI.
However influential, large or small, Sneezers are absolute key to your business. Remember that Amazon.com product reviews, ePinion.com write ups and so on work on the same line. Customer reviews might not have a Oprah Effect but they can make a tremendous difference, both good and bad.
PAGEVIEWS – ADVERTISERS LOVE THIS
One other important figure to look at here is the number of pageviews a site gets. Particularly sites that generate most of their revenues from advertising, page views are important.
The basic idea is that the more pages a user goes to the more advertising he is going to be exposed to. So a drop in page views is a problem for sites like Myspace.
And that’s what’s happening: Myspace page views are down and seem to fall on a steady scale. Looking at the graph the numbers don’t look too bad. However at the time of this writing, Myspace page views have dropped over 18% over 3 months. Do you see the problem now?
Facebook pageviews are up over 20%. This is good news for Facebook’s accounting department as more pageviews tend to mean more advertising revenues.
The big winner in terms of pageviews is Twitter, with about 330% increase in pageviews. But pageviews don’t mean nearly as much to Twitter because their advertising and monetization model is different, at least for now.
TIME SPENT ON SITE
Facebook is also the site where people spend the most time per day, an average of over 25 minutes, compared to just over 20 minutes on Myspace and not even 10 minutes on Twitter.
This makes sense as using Twitter simply doesn’t take as much time as checking and responding to emails, updating profiles, checking out new music or videos, all things Myspace and Facebook users do on a daily basis.
Advertisers factor time spent on a site in their decision to advertise on a site or not. The more time a user spends on a site, so they figure, the more they are exposed to ads. This is oversimplified thinking and unfortunately this type of superficial decision making is all too common among advertisers. This, however, is good news for sites like Myspace and Co. who rely on their advertisers’ collective ignorance and superficiality to survive.
“Hey, they’re famous so let’s advertise on there” isn’t a prudent way to decide where to spend one’s advertising dollars…but it’s a very common way.
(You’d be surprised how many high profile companies leave complete boobs in charge of advertising.)
MYSPACE – DYING KING
Myspace is still going strong but I think it’s safe to say the novelty of having a Myspace account has worn off. This is partially Myspace’s fault: while never entirely a smooth experience, Myspace has become a nightmare for users. Full of ads, resource hogging scripts meant to spiff up profile pages, and a tremendous number of flat out spam make Myspace the poster boy for what not to do in today’s market.
I suspect this is one major reason Facebook is seeing such growth: much less advertising and everything just runs cleaner. At least right now it does but I’m seeing Facebook introducing more ads all the time.
Worse still, spam via profile spamming and “apps” created by users is starting to rear its ugly head in large numbers. It’ll be just a matter of time until Facebook is seeing numbers drop as well.
How does Myspace make money? Mostly advertising.
Back in 2006, Google agreed to a $900 Million (!) advertising deal with NewsCorp, the media conglomerate that purchased Myspace for a rediculously large sum. But even before the deal Myspace raked in about $350 Million per year, mostly in advertising revenues.
The problem is users do everything to avoid advertising.
When is the last time you clicked on a banner on Myspace? At one point advertisers realize they’re just wasting large sums of precious resources on Myspace and won’t renew their advertising contracts. That’s exactly what’s happening right now – Google is supposedly not going to renew its advertising deal. They’ll make their last big payment in 2010 and that’s it.
This is a sign of things to come for Myspace and if its operators aren’t able to figure out an alternative way to monetize their site there’ll be some problems.
At this time, Twitter is a joy to use – no annoying banner ads, no pop ups, and since users can’t install custom scripts there is little danger of everything slowing down to a crawl, like it did with Myspace (and soon will with Facebook).
But if Twitter follows in Myspace or Facebooks’ footsteps and clutters its interface with ads and scripts, users will react the same way as they did before: they’ll stay away in droves.
SUMMARY
Currently it appears Myspace is losing ground, while Facebook and especially Twitter are on the rise. However, the abandonment rate (also referred to as bounce rate) on Twitter is rumored to be about 40%, meaning about fourty percent of users who sign up with Twitter leave and never come back after using it once or twice.
Again, it’s a novelty thing. But as Twitter grows it becomes more appealing – more users and “tweets” means more reasons for newcomers to stay and get addicted.
Like all other social network sites, Twitter’s power and appeal grows with every member. I think Twitter’s bounce rate will remain fairly high but less than it is now because Twitter’s appeal to people grows with every new member.
Myspace will continue to lose members unless they dramatically change the way they operate. I don’t see them remove banners or members’ ability to use codes and scripts because the latter is required to offer a customized user experience (very important in social networking), and the former is currently the main way Myspace earns its income.
Facebook, I think, will eventually follow in Myspace’s footsteps – increase advertising, dilute the user experience, and lose members.
The novelty factor wears out eventually and unless there are compelling reasons for users to continually use a site they won’t. Being hit by countless ads, slow loading pages, and getting spam messages are not compelling reasons.
Twitter’s appeal is likely to diminish over time as well, although as long as Twitter’s user experience remains fast and convenient the main reason people stop using it because they simply have nothing more to say, or aren’t interested in following somebody else.
Another problem for all three is spam, internal (ie provided by the site itself) and external (third party spammers). At one point virtually 90% of all “friend invites” and messages on my Myspace account was from spammers. Most of my contacts had the same experience. Needless to say I rarely log in to my account these days. Facebook is in the same boat.
However, Twitter spam will not have as big of an impact because it’s easy to avoid spammers on Twitter: just don’t follow them.
There are no incessant friend requests, messages, or popups to drive members away. As long as this stays that way spam will not be as big of a problem on Twitter as it is on Myspace, Facebook, and other social media networks.
There will always be a media darling. It used to be Myspace, right now it’s Twitter and Facebook. Just remember nothing ever stays the same on the Web. The numbers here confirm this.
Maybe you will develop the next media darling and if you do make sure you ride the wave as long as you can. Because eventually that wave will go back to where it came from – the big, wide ocean of sites and ideas known as the World Wide Web.
