MySpace v Facebook - stats don’t lie, or do they?
It seems to be all over the digital press, so here’s a quick summary of what’s going on in the battle between MySpace and Facebook.
The January stats are in from the States (courtesy of compete.com via cnet) and show Facebook in the lead with about 68 million unique visitors, well ahead of MySpace on 58 million. Of interest, is the rise of Twitter, sitting pretty in third spot.
One of the founders of MySpace, Brett Brewer, revealed in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald this week, that “MySpace would still grow strongly (this year) but not as fast as Facebook.” Figures from closer to home, support Brewer’s view, with Nielson Online reporting that MySpace users have declined by 400 000 users over the past year while Facebook have signed 2 million. This is a big turnaround from September 2007 when MySpace had double the number of Facebook users.
How do they monetise all these users… don’t ask Rupert Murdoch, he’s been out discussing (and looking for answers to) this very topic this week.
As for the way statistics are reported, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has been vocal of late in it’s quest to develop a standard measurment system to avoid losing the confidence of advertisers. Paul Fisher, the CEO of IAB Australia, has called for an end to online metrics like ‘unique browsers’ and ‘unique visitors’ in place of a more accountable and truthful metric.
The IAB believe that vast inaccuracies occur with measurement when factors such as cookie deletion and multiple IP addresses are not dealt with accurately.
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