Social Network Use Down. Except Where it’s Doubled.
April 5th, 2008 | by Brad King |Well, the traditional media has hyped the hell out of social networks, so that means it’s about time to start tearing them down. The first salvo (that I’ve seen) comes on the heels of comScore numbers which suggest that fewer people are signing up for — and using — social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.
The Register suggests that the slowdown in new additions — as well as the leveling off of time-on-site stats — should concern those who believe social networking sites will become a mainstay online.
The only problem, the stats actually point to a massive increase in use. But The Register does make one good point, which should concern everyone who lived through the first tech bust:
And the "widget economy", where developers cobble together web applications in the hope of grabbing their own slice of the riches social networking’s massive personal data warehouses promised? Well the business model for RockYou pretty much sums it up. The startup, that owns the number three Facebook App "Super Wall", only sells advertising to other Facebook App developers.
Ted Dziuba of the recently-departed, much-missed blog Uncov put it best: "Fuck, this is a pyramid scheme. There is no money input into this system except venture capital.
"I remember a time, long long ago, when tech companies spent their own venture capital on each other, so revenues were all booked from the same small pool of money. Yeah, as I recall, it didn’t end well."
Still, that only tells some of the story.
if we look at the numbers, year-over-year, for the major social networking sites (which you can do here, near the bottom of the page), there are some interesting figures:
Myspace added 8 million unique users in 2008 (68 million users); Facebook added 15 million uniques (34 million); Bebo added 1.3 million (4.2 million); LinkedIN added 2 million (2.8 million); Friendster added 600,000 (1.7 million).
Only Windows Live Spaces and HI5.com saw a drop in unique users.
As these networks mature, it’s absolutely expected that the time on site statistics will drop. Once you get your site set up, your friends added and all your widgets in place, the beauty of social networking is that you can begin to aggregate all of your data in one place — say through life streaming, which allows you to more efficiently use each network.
The fact that MORE people are signing up for a variety of services is exactly how the growth should happen.
Will there be a drop out of some of these sites? Absolutely. Let the market decide.
Does that mean "fatigue" has set in? Absolutely not. This is a maturing of the social network development.
