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MySpace #1 US Destination Last Week 381

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the looking-for-a-stage-2-burn dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Hitwise is reporting that MySpace has reached the top, surpassing Yahoo! Mail as the most visited site on the internet for US users. Seeing a 4300% increase in visits in just two short years, this internet sensation has come quite a long ways. From the article: 'To put MySpace's growth in perspective, if we look back to July 2004 myspace.com represented only .1% of all Internet visits. This time last year myspace.com represented 1.9% of all Internet visits. With the week ending July 8, 2006 market share figure of 4.5% of all the US Internet visits.'"
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MySpace #1 US Destination Last Week More

MySpace #1 US Destination Last Week

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  • blwh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:38AM (#15703399)
    And boy is that depressing

    • Re:blwh (Score:5, Funny)

      by balloonhead ( 589759 ) <doncuan AT yahoo DOT com> on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:53AM (#15703596)
      Not really - these aren't real people causing hits.

      You'll notice the timing of the traffic surge with recent terrorist event and subsequent legislation.

      It's mostly just PATRIOT act research by the gummint to check out prospective employees.
      • Not really - these aren't real people causing hits. You'll notice the timing of the traffic surge with recent terrorist event and subsequent legislation. It's mostly just PATRIOT act research by the gummint to check out prospective employees.

        I think you need to readjust your frequency there, Kenneth.

    • Re:blwh (Score:5, Funny)

      by Vo0k ( 760020 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @02:43AM (#15703723) Journal
      Seems you are depressed. You may want to visit that site, MySpace.com, where you will find many other depressed people with similar problems and be able to share your misery with them.

  • In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cyranoVR ( 518628 ) * <{moc.liamg} {ta} {RVonaryc}> on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:40AM (#15703406) Homepage Journal
    In completely unrelated news, Yahoo! has announced that starting next month users of their free Yahoo! Mail service will have a new feature: pictures of scantly-clad 16 year-olds on their mail home page.

  • Worthless. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Myspace is the most pointless, horribly designed site on the internet.

    • Re:Worthless. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:20AM (#15703523)
      Myspace is the most pointless, horribly designed site on the internet.

      In other news, MySpace was designed.

      Clue to all geeks everywhere:

      Nobody cares that MySpace runs on code that is inelegant, nor that it results in sloppy-looking personal pages

      It's a big ol' mess, but it's a big ol' mess that a lot of young folks find useful. End of story.

      • Re:Worthless. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SamSim ( 630795 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @05:22AM (#15704021) Homepage Journal
        Actually, we as geeks care. We care because we put lots of effort into making our code work elegantly and our websites look good, and it doesn't seem to make any difference. We care, because we're really great at this stuff, but marketing trumps usability every time. We care because Myspace sucks, but there are millions of people using it, and it's like a big slap in the face for every one of us who put any effort into our work.

        • Re:Worthless. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @08:20AM (#15704381)
          It doesn't seem to make any difference. We care, because we're really great at this stuff, but marketing trumps usability every time.

          MySpace is well designed, you just can't see the forest for the trees.

          Firstly, go read this article [joelonsoftware.com] which talks about what geeks call "marketing", which is often used as a throwaway term for all the parts of running a software business that the programmers don't really understand or care about. MySpace has not done any serious marketing. It grew entirely through word of mouth.

          Next, go actually look at MySpace, and do it through the eyes of a non-technical young person. I don't mean a 16 year old, though I'm sure there are lots there, I mean anybody under 35. MySpace offers the following things:

          • It's distracting and fun. It has lots of features that let people spend their time just faffing around - redesigning their profile yet again, finding cool bands, seeing who their friends friends are, writing on peoples walls etc. If there's nothing good on TV and they don't have much energy it's an easy way to be entertained.

          • It lets people express themselves. Ever wondered why almost every MySpace profile page is customised? Well, people just love to express themselves. How many people live in a room with no ornaments or posters or personal artifacts? Hardly anybody right? Why do people blow 8mb of memory on a wallpaper that will sit under their copy of Word for 90% of the day? Why do people use annoying custom ringtones that they change every few weeks? People like to customise their personal space, it's just a part of who we are, and MySpace allows you to do that.

          • It's a quick and easy way for musicians to get their music out to the masses. See the example of Lily Allen in the UK for somebody who made it big via MySpace. Ditto for I think the Arctic Monkeys.

          • It can be used as a dating site even though it's not marketed that way.

            It used to be that people met through local institutions ... if you go back and ask your grandmother how she met your grandfather I wouldn't be surprised to hear an answer like "we went to the same church" or "he worked in a local shop and I saw him every day when buying groceries". This sort of thing is now very uncommon. People live more isolated lives, and it's often hard to date people you meet through work due to workplace politics - this is especially true of slightly older types who are in management.

            So it's not surprising that surveys and studies everywhere show that use of internet dating is way, way up and growing all the time. But it still has some social stigma attached to it. MySpace lets you search peoples profiles by region and easily contact them, which is all you really need to have a "dating site", except anybody who is on there can simply say they are there because their friends are there, because they like the bands etc. And for people looking it's better too, as people tend to post (mostly) real photos and don't just make stuff up, because they know their friends might see it.

          • It has lots and lots and lots of people

          Some things MySpace doesn't have: technical sophistication, robustness, speed - all the things geeks value. These things do matter, look at how totally Facebook has crushed MySpace amongst those who have access to it. But never discount the value of a good social design, because these sites aren't tech demos, they are social networking sites.

    • Copy/paste for the lazy masses:

      SURVEY: MAJORITY OF WEB USERS ARE
      FBI AGENTS POSING AS TEENAGE GIRLS
      Survey Shows Evolving Web No Longer Dominated by Male Techies


      NEW YORK, N.Y. (SatireWire.com) -- The Internet reached a demographic milestone this week as a new study revealed that for the first time, the majority of U.S. Internet users are FBI agents posing as teenage girls.

      The report, by research firm Media Metrix, marks the first time the demographic group known as "males" has not been in the major

    • Re:Reminds me of this old joke (Score:5, Funny)

      by enitime ( 964946 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @05:34AM (#15704041)
      I always hear it as:

      The Internet: Where men are men, women are men, and children are federal agents.

  • Why didn't they take the epoch when the site started, so they'd go up by +inf%?

  • What can we learn from this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ThePineTree.net ( 984445 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:44AM (#15703417) Homepage
    How can we learn from this to make our sites better. Can we translate this type of activity to the 30+ crowd instead of just the teens?

    • Piece of cake. (Score:4, Informative)

      by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:07AM (#15703484)
      Can we translate this type of activity to the 30+ crowd instead of just the teens?

      At the rate that teens and 20-somethings are being dumbed down by visiting MySpace pages, the 30+ crowd that they will become will have lost any ability to grow out of using it.

      1) Get a 16-year-old using MySpace
      2) Wait 14 years - thus, 30-year-old still using MySpace
      3) Profit!

    • Re:What can we learn from this? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:46AM (#15703577) Homepage
      I wanted to write a humorous response, but the answer is simply: yes.

      Basically, My Space does all of those sappy things that the internet was supposed to do years ago. The content is all by users. It's all about helping people network with eachother. It appeals to people's vanity as well as their curiosity. It happens to have a great underserved niche (indie bands) that tent pegs it even if they aren't the primary users. It's naughty. It's viral.

      Basically, put control in the hands of your users, and let them work for the communal site. Find some underserved niche and add features to support their usage habits. Make sure everyone joins. Don't censor interesting stuff. Be a community builder rather than a content provider.

      Let them build it, and they will come.

    • Disclaimer: this isn't meant to argue against your question, just that you happened to mention how this can apply to the 30+ crowd and I figured I'd say how it already has. Social communities in the professional crowd thus far are awkward at best, usually because professionals simply don't want to waste their time on a networking tool based off of a teen socializing model.

      You'd be amazed how many 30+ users are on myspace. Just cause you're 30, doesn't mean you can't be involved in the service industry, t

    • I don't think thirtysomethings in general go for "crazes" in the same way that 15-25-year-olds do. It may be impossible to get a reaction on the same scale from that demographic.

    • use Hitwise to track your website, apparently (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @02:46AM (#15703727)
      Apparently, "sites that use Hitwise to track traffic" = "The World Wide Web".

      Want a good example of how that "top site" statistic is a bunch of bullshit? I don't know a single person that uses Myspace. I know LOTS of people that have yahoo/gmail/etc webmail accounts.

      Oh, and it doesn't hurt to have every other page return a server error or a blank page. I'm told Myspace's servers are about as reliable a crack addict.

  • So this means... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:44AM (#15703418)
    that myspace.com is now offically the new sewer of the internet?

    the downhill trend of quality of life continues

  • Worrisome, but not unexpected (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eplossl ( 242870 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:46AM (#15703424)
    Consider...

    Today, we have online dating, message boards for everything, and web based chat everywhere. If a site isn't dynamic, it's quickly dropped by the online populace. The fact is, this is not unexpected. Myspace.com spent some time developing a site where people could blog and network. It worked for them.

    The worrisome part of this is that people don't seem to understand how potentially dangerous this is. Consider the sheer volume of details some people (read: children) put on their myspace accounts. Parents SHOULD police this, but, all too often, they don't. The fact is that this service presents all too much possibility for children to get hurt. Consider also the single women all over who post their info online. Some of them realize that they shouldn't post that they live alone in an apartment in south-central LA, but others would very quickly post this sort of thing. Unfortunately, this again puts people at risk.

    I don't think that the site should be stopped from operating, as I tend to be somewhat of the opinion that if you put your details out there for the world to see, it's your fault if something bad happens. OTOH, people need to think a bit more.

    • not a problem (Score:5, Funny)

      by r00t ( 33219 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:33AM (#15703554) Journal
      The "single women all over who post their info online" are 45-year-old fat males.

      The "children" are FBI agents.

    • Having a unique name really sucks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by foreverdisillusioned ( 763799 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:56AM (#15703605) Journal
      When I first started messing around on the internet 10+ years ago, I used my first name for a couple things. Very quickly I caught on that this wasn't such a great idea, but what I didn't count on is lifelong archival and the rising power of search engines. You see, my first name and last name are rare to the point that I highly doubt anyone else in America has them both. Not completely weird or a made up word, it's just rather uncommon to encounter either one individually, and that makes the combination unique.

      So anyway, you need only type my name into Google and have a complete record of every inane thing I ever said back when I was 15 years old. If there is anyone else in the world with the same name, they haven't ever used it on the net. Ok, so it's not particularly damaging information, but it does allow ANYONE to find out that I like Nirvana and Douglas Adams and RPGs and arguing with people. It's rather embarassing, really, to have your semi-profound adolescent musings completely exposed, availible for anyone to read at any time so long as they know your first and last name, but there's really nothing I can do about it. The original archives have been cached by Google and archive.org. Like it or not, I'm immortalized, and I really pity the fools on Myspace who have unique names, or even the ones with common names but specific addresses (or other identifying personal info) posted. In all liklihood every single trivial fact, every single inane/insane rant has been archived *somewhere* and it'll eventually turn up in a Google search. It's irreversable--it's a gigantic bell that simply can't be un-rung.

      I shudder to think what would've happened if I made a truly questionable post under my real name. If some teen posts a rant on Myspace that could be construed as racist or radically anarchist or in any other way offensive or unpopular, that rant will be there perhaps for the rest of his life. It will be there every time he goes to apply for a job, and if he was foolish enough to provide such information as a home address he won't be able to claim it's not him. I don't know what there's any real solution for this except education. A lot of people out there don't see the point in anonymity, or even worse they view it as a weakness, a sign of guilt or triviality. Unfortunately, likely they won't start paying attention until criminals and potential employers/friends/lovers alike start turning to Google every time they get curious about their mark/employee/friend/etc.
      • the fools on Myspace who have unique names, or even the ones with common names but specific addresses (or other identifying personal info) posted. In all liklihood every single trivial fact, every single inane/insane rant has been archived *somewhere* and it'll eventually turn up in a Google search

        Google doesn't keep archives of websites permanently (or doesn't make them available if they do). When they re-spider a site they replace their copy with the current data; old pages will disappear from its sear

      • how about this (Score:3, Funny)

        by 2008 ( 900939 )
        You hire one of those scuzzy link farmer guys to ensure that any real Google results using your name are drowned out by a torrent of linkspam sites and newsposts advertising 0EM s0ftwar3.

    • Darwinian... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Vo0k ( 760020 )

      people don't seem to understand how potentially dangerous this is. Consider the sheer volume of details some people (read: children) put on their myspace accounts. Parents SHOULD police this, but, all too often, they don't. The fact is that this service presents all too much possibility for children to get hurt. Consider also the single women all over who post their info online. Some of them realize that they shouldn't post that they live alone in an apartment in south-central LA, but others would very quic

    • You're rigth -- one should in general consider the consequences of what one is doing.

      But be careful not to fall into the panic-trap. Life does not consist of a series of crisis. Most things that in principle can go wrong, do not, infact, go wrong. Theres a line between sensible caution and downrigth paranoia.

      If you pay too much attention to never risking anything, you give up something else; your freedom.

      Some people say, young females should never travel alone. I've read tips that you, as a single tra

  • counting hits? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NynexNinja ( 379583 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:48AM (#15703429)
    How do you obtain their numbers? Are they using DNS? Are they putting sniffers on all the core routers? Is this even possible to any degree of accuracy? It seems this junk science is probably about as reliable as Neilsen ratings...

  • Obvious! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PWNT ( 985141 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:50AM (#15703434)
    They picked the easiest market to sway, young adults. In addtion, lots of disposable income(advertisement goldmine!). Not withstanding its use (the website) as a hook-up for hookups.

    Combining lots of barely post pubescent teens with raging hormones and disposable income contributes to this large growth. The website scaled and spread by word of mouth. This site is the best representation of a "free internet" as far as I can tell. Everyone who wants to be on it, can be on it. This includes the spectrum of bands looking for fans with a pro website, to teens looking for a connection, including the text choice of size 55 pink wingdings on a blinking blue background or whatever.

    The site has support from everyone, the users, the advertisers, the creators, the owners. Everyone is getting something they want from it. This is how a business grows so rapidly.

    To quote(paraphrase) someone, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

    • "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

      Actually you didn't paraphrase, that was exact. It's by Charles Dickens, and opens "A Tale of Two Cities."

      Someone else draw the clever parallels to MySpace. It's late, so I can come up with is that at some point there's I hope there's a revolution that knocks MySpace off the 'net.

  • YESSZZ OMG OMG this is the rockz0rx (Score:5, Funny)

    by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:53AM (#15703444)
    We hit NO. 1 peeps, this EEE the SHEET Yo, just ballin'

    THES IS out the ass omg OMG I am speechless

    LOng live EMO! peace and love to all. and BOOBIES!

    :kisses:

    yours,
    xxxzzzMYsPACErUlEsmEyyyyzzzxxx

  • Narcissism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by caitsith01 ( 606117 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:54AM (#15703449) Journal
    I may be alone in this, but I find MySpace for the most part intensely narcissistic and inane.

    People are presented with a tool for publishing absolutely anything, about any topic they choose. Instead of presenting thoughtful, creative or otherwise valuable content, the vast majority elect to pointlessly ramble about themselves in minute detail or engage in endless back and forth with other users about nothing in particular. Which is fine, but it shouldn't have the legitimacy of other web content.

    In many ways, the whole blog concept has perhaps lowered the barrier to entry for on-line publishing a little *too* far. When anyone can publish anything you want with virtually no effort, then it no longer requires that you be inspired or motivated before your inane ramblings are out there in cyberspace. The media has adopted the trend too, with 'blog' in the context of a news site all too often meaning 'poorly researched and largely content-free "reporting" on sensationalist subject matter.'

    Perhaps it's time to move past the blog hype and to consider some method for differentiating personal diaries (i.e., what used to be a personal homepage), social chit chat (i.e., what used to be a bulletin board, IRC, or IM activity), and publications with actual content. Right now the net is awash with an ever-expanding tide of rubbish and there is very little to assist in finding the few really interesting and high quality publications amongst the garbage.

    Ultimately it's depressing that, given the ability to communicate our ideas to anyone on earth, most of us can't come up with anything better than pictures of ourselves drinking too much and mass-produced but ineffectual rebelliousness.
    • The vast majority elect to ... engage in endless back and forth with other users about nothing in particular.


      You must be new here.

      Oh wait, were you talking about Myspace...? Sorry.
    • dude it's not that bad. You make is sound like there being anything other than what you call "high quality publications" online is dreadful affliction, devastation, pestilence. Open mind a little no harm in people finding value in internet socially or any of million other ways people enjoy using it. Just b/c it not what you into doesnt mean it's garbage

      What makes you think it's so hard to tell the difference between blogs, "social chit chat", and "publications with actual content" as you call, anyway?
    • You're far from alone. I've had the same feeling ever since blog became a buzzword.

      I basically ignore most of what would be considered a blog or newsboard anymore. They are awash with the ramblings of 17 year old conspiratists that believe they have a better understanding of things than someone with a degree in the subject.

      It's just depressing that you have to waste large amounts of time crawling through nothing to find something of value.
    • purely out of curiosity a year and change ago. since it started booming i use it to post garbage on myspace sites for random ppl who make me their friend. i do it when i am bored with reading online or doing anything productive. it's kinda cathartic.
    • ...the vast majority elect to pointlessly ramble about themselves in minute detail or engage in endless back and forth with other users about nothing in particular.
      What did you expect them to do?
    • I find MySpace for the most part intensely narcissistic and inane.

      No shit. That's why it's so popular with 13-21 year olds, who for the most part are also intensely narcissistic and inane.

    • Re:Narcissism (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:35AM (#15703555) Homepage
      While I agree that MySpace is inane, it's also unrealistic to expect that if you give millions of people a platform, they'll come up with anything inspirational, informative, or meaningful.

      The vast majority of people are merely average Joes. Everyone cannot be Einstein, nor can everyone be Crichton. That's just the way it is and the way it always will be. Most people don't post anything deeper because most people simply aren't deeper, and it's unlikely that they ever will be, in particular when they're born, raised, and socialized in a consumer orgy of a society that is itself incredibly inane.

      Not only have most people in our culture never had a deep thought, but most of them have never even been exposed to a deep thought. Deep thoughts aren't good for markets, they tend to reduce superficiality and overconsumption, which are the two things the growth and maintenance of our society most depends on.
      • nor can everyone be Crichton.

        God I hope not.

      • Re:Narcissism (Score:3, Insightful)

        by wfberg ( 24378 )

        The vast majority of people are merely average Joes. Everyone cannot be Einstein, nor can everyone be Crichton. That's just the way it is and the way it always will be. Most people don't post anything deeper because most people simply aren't deeper, and it's unlikely that they ever will be, in particular when they're born, raised, and socialized in a consumer orgy of a society that is itself incredibly inane.

        You know, had myspace been available in Einstein's day, I don't think he would have used it much.

        Wel

      • Re:Narcissism (Score:5, Insightful)

        by General Wesc ( 59919 ) <slashdot@wescnet.cjb.net> on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @10:27AM (#15705176) Homepage Journal
        While I agree that MySpace is inane, it's also unrealistic to expect that if you give millions of people a platform, they'll come up with anything inspirational, informative, or meaningful.
        Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
    • I kind of wish the internet was still limited to the nerds in some way - not that it's less free for everyone to use - it's just that if you want to put something on the internet you would have to seek out a nerd facilitator... Anyway, yes, most of the internet is now rubbish. Thankfully search engines do a decent job of sorting through this rubbish, but as the rubbish becomes more important than real information that might change. That is, a retarded blog page linked to from tons of spots might rise to

    • Re:Narcissism (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @02:21AM (#15703669) Homepage Journal
      People are presented with a tool for publishing absolutely anything, about any topic they choose. Instead of presenting thoughtful, creative or otherwise valuable content, the vast majority elect to pointlessly ramble about themselves in minute detail or engage in endless back and forth with other users about nothing in particular.

      I don't want to sound to misanthropic, but if MySpace is inane, it's because people are inane. MySpace is merely a microcosm. Go out and listen to people talking. At work, at a bar, whatever. You're going to hear pointless rambling.

      On a completely different tack... you're looking at what people publish, and maybe not looking at what people are reading on MySpace -- what they're getting out of it. That is a lot harder to figure out. What I found, when I signed up, was that it was a way to keep up with my local music scene. In that regard, it has been valuable .. or at least (heh) no more inane than the local music scene itself (which maybe isn't saying much, I can't make up my mind about that). I don't know why this one sector of the economy(?) or culture(?) is so well represented on that one website, but it just happens that most bands are on MySpace. And most of my time spent there, is looking to see when'n'where I'm going to be rocking-out next. Sometimes I wonder how much of MySpace traffic is accounted for, in people just looking at event-invites, checking bands' schedules, etc. The interface certainly isn't very efficient.

      • I don't want to sound to misanthropic, but if MySpace is inane, it's because people are inane. MySpace is merely a microcosm. Go out and listen to people talking. At work, at a bar, whatever. You're going to hear pointless rambling.

        Oh, I agree. That was really my point, made in a roundabout way. People, including me, mainly spew forth garbage. The blog craze has created an environment where there seems to be a belief that if you electronically record and publish this garbage, it somehow becomes worthwh

    • Pessimism (Score:5, Insightful)

      by enjahova ( 812395 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @11:18AM (#15705619) Homepage
      You are not alone in your arguement. You are supported by medieval scholars who decried the rise of literacy, the government of the UK when the printing press was made, and many more anti-intellectual pessimists throughout history. They held your very same belief, what sort of chaos and tragedy will occur if everybody is literate? Peasants are dumb and uncultured, they will only polute the literary pool. You say the same shit about the internet.

      The only difference now is that we have SEARCH ENGINES, computers, and instant communication to help us sort through the bullshit. People like you like to ignore the fact that if only 1 out of every 99 people posting to myspace create something worthwhile, thats one more worthwhile thing on the internet to be found and shared.

      I believe the viral spread of information has not reached its full potential, myspace is a step in the right direction. Google and other search engines are helping too. You act as if removing the hundreds of worthless expressions are worth the cost of forgoing one worthwhile contribution. You conveniently forget that by reading slashdot you are getting a selection of top articles for discussion over thousands of "unworthy" articles submited a day.

      I think the only reason people like you get depressed is because you dont understand the internet. You don't see how instant communication changes the way things work. We can't rely on an intellectual authority anymore to tell us what is good and bad. Millions of people on myspace are expressing themselves in ways they never knew they could, even if most of it is terrible html they are having a learning experience and real social interaction. You want to take all that away because its easy to dismiss as trash? Don't add them as your friends, don't even sign up for myspace. In fact you should probably stop visiting slashdot, it should depress you that so many articles get submitted that are worthless, wasting the editors time, and our time when one slips through. You'd rather not have slashdot and save the internet the trouble right?

  • Find this hard to believe. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by extra the woos ( 601736 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:54AM (#15703450)
    I find this difficult to believe. I would think that google would have more visits than myspace, for sure.
    • The Google search engine is not a 'destination'.

    • Re:Find this hard to believe. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @02:29AM (#15703685) Homepage Journal

      Google has an efficient interface, so people aren't paging through lots of stuff trying to find what they're looking for. They aren't having to load a bunch of images that are unrelated to anything they're interested in, either.

      With MySpace, if I want to find someone's schedule, I have to look at page after page of unsorted friends. I guess MySpace's programmers have decided that computers just aren't any good at sorting things. (And try using MySpace without loading images sometime, or with Javascript disabled.)

      If the study was based on volume-of-traffic or number-of-http-requests, it doesn't surprise me MySpace came out on top. It takes an aweful lot of web pages transferred, to get anything done on there. Maybe it's so they can sell more ad impressions or something dumb like that (too bad I filter out the ads).

    • Google's design is lightweight. Myspace does not even pretend to suffer from this convenience. Google might very well account for more unique visitors, but Myspace makes up for the visitors by having each page view result in a significantly greater amount of bandwidth usage. Not to mention, if Google is working in it's optimum capacity, it minimizes page views - if you only load the front page, and then find what you're looking on in the first page of search results, it doesn't generate many page hits.

  • MySpace replacement (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ruins ( 981807 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:55AM (#15703453)
    Project Name: "A Life"
    Project Goal: Obtain "A Life" and do something with it once obtained.
    Probability of success:
    (World Population - Number of people on MySpace) / World Population

  • Really? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:56AM (#15703457) Homepage
    I didn't realized that pedophiles and their victims make up such a significant portion of the Internet population. I kid, I kid.
    • I didn't realized that pedophiles and their victims make up such a significant portion of the Internet population. I kid, I kid.

      Well, at least you're not a victim... (emphasis added for those who wouldn't otherwise get the joke)

  • understanding myspace (Score:5, Interesting)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @12:58AM (#15703466)
    Myspace is driven and pushed by "old media", not "new media". It is old media's way of saying, well if people must bypass our traditional control over information and content for the internet - let's try to make it our internet and not someone elses. For example, their obsession with "child predators" as of late probably has little to do with protecting children and everything to do with making sure that their system is fenced off from "that big nasty mean world out there". No, not the nasty world of child abusers, but the nasty world that breaks their distribution monopoly on information, news, and content.

    They are the "bread and circuses" of the information age. Feed em crap, keep em happy, and most of all keep their eyes and ears distracted from political and financial issues of the real world. Like them or hate them, you gotta admit theyre doing a hell of a job at pushing the hype. IMHO, it is truely amazing.
    • Myspace is driven and pushed by "old media", not "new media". It is old media's way of saying, well if people must bypass our traditional control over information and content for the internet - let's try to make it our internet and not someone elses.

      I'm sorry but this is not accurate. Myspace did a complete end run around the "old media" record companies. There are thousands of artists on there that would never have a shot at traditional distribution that are now leveraging the fact that they can be discov

  • Myspc Sux! LOL! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by walnutmon ( 988223 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:03AM (#15703474)
    It seems to me that myspace is wildly popular, and that it is also the target of a whole lot of criticism from people who actually know how to use the internet.

    The general anti myspace rhetoric is usually, "we can already have our own web pages", which labels myspace as a somewhat redundant service with advertisements.

    What I rarely see about myspace, is what a brilliant idea it is. Not everyone knows how to create a website, but most people have the capacity, and interest to learn how to use myspace. Instead of looking down on myspacers perhaps those of us who know how to use the internet should learn how to cater to those who are not technically savvy. Isn't that the idea of selling technology? Making things that normally wouldn't be accessible to everyone accessible?

    Of course, whenever one of my friends asks me if I have created a myspace page yet, I always reply by calling them a worthless tool. Weird eh?

    • What I rarely see about myspace, is what a brilliant idea it is.

      When GeoCities offered the same thing circa '95, the called that "brilliant" too.

      Now excuse me while I go "cyber-flirt" with some cop pretending to be a 16 year old girl with a trust fund.

  • The triumph of "old media" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:05AM (#15703476) Homepage

    Alexa says that the top five sites today are, in order, Yahoo, MSN, Google, Myspace, and eBay. Of those, only Myspace is owned by an "old media" company, and only Myspace is growing significantly. This may be the first time that a top Internet site was owned by an "old media" company. (Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation [www.newscorp]). It makes sense; Myspace is to the Internet as tabloid journalism is to the newspaper industry. News Corp now has a leading position in both.

  • ...and Orkut is still nr 1 in Brasil, is there any alternative website that you can recommend?
  • See telcos? If you really want to make money, just support and lobby for a complete net neutrality bill which has a clause excluding Myspace.com from neutrality! Then you'll be rich, and we'll have net neutrality(ish)!

  • Observation on Microsoft re: MySpace (Score:5, Interesting)

    by afabbro ( 33948 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:14AM (#15703506) Homepage
    I find this interesting in a Microsoft context. Microsoft has consistently tried to gather a bigger share of the Internet pie and consistently failed. First, MSN never got near AOL back in the walled garden days. Then MSN never got near Yahoo in the directory wars. Or near any of the major search engines, much less Google. MSN Home or Communities or whatever never got any kind of traction when blogging sprung to life.

    And now, a startup is the #1 site (or even if you question the numbers, pretty obviously in the top five) and there is nothing Microsoft has to show.

    Sure, you can say Microsoft makes its money in other places, they're an OS/app company, etc. but they sure spend a lot of money on MSN, trying to get more Internet eyeballs. To me, an outside observer, it just seems that they are eternally reactionary and a couple years behind, despite having practically unlimited resources. What an indictment.

  • Prediction: (Score:5, Funny)

    by John Garvin ( 229844 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:19AM (#15703519) Homepage
    90% of the replies to this story will amount to "I believe I'm too cool for MySpace."

  • The NEW Internet (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LittleBigScript ( 618162 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:22AM (#15703530) Homepage Journal
    I think you all aren't going to like this, but Myspace is beginning to become what people (under 30) mean when people ask if you are "on the internet?" This is similar to when people ask if you have a phone, they mean a cell phone.

    I saw a movie preview yesterday on tv where it didn't list a website, but a myspace address. It may be a good thing that your content provider will become a social networking site, so you could look at your content in virtually the same way on every computer which is connected.

    But doing the same thing the same way as everyone else isn't what being a nerd is all about, right?
  • Of couse, because its massively popular, and its also the worlds most gruesome 24/7 car crash. A substantial portion of that traffic has to be from the 'how bad can it get' voyeristic traffic.

    That said, there are a number of top folks in lots of musical/artistic/etc displinines who realize that its a decent way to provide a forum for their fans. (For me, its the number of top flight DMC DJs and Ninja Tunes artists who offer free videos and music across the site.) I wonder if that will stop if it becomes too

  • And what percentage of the traffic is bots? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by micheas ( 231635 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @01:30AM (#15703548) Homepage Journal
    I received 55 friend requests today none of them from real people. (Well I haven't looked at all of them, but the few I clicked on were from profiles that identified them selves as 18-22 single female, and all had lots of male "friends" they all more or less looked like ads for dating services, promos for bands, etc.)

    It is kind of interesting that myspace seems to hold up under all the spam, even though they don't seem to do much about it (or are at least losing the war badly)

    Hmm, time to go check out freshmeat for a myspace invite script.
  • none of them friended me! [myspace.com]

    I'm totally gonna go emo!

  • .. before they take over the Internet.

    I guess I hereby welcome our dark web2.0 lords in our vicinity ...

  • 3.7 billion page view per day (Score:4, Informative)

    by gluecode ( 950306 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @02:03AM (#15703619)
    I speak to the person who runs their (myspace) ad servers, every week. He tells me that they average 3.7 billion page views per day. They run a custom version of the Doublick 5 ad servers, almost 400 of these servers. But they have a issue of how to monetize this traffic. They are trying to find ways to do that. They have a lot of junk ad inventory. I hear that they are getting very much into the mobile space in the US and internationally - video blogging, photo blogging etc. This way they can make atleast two dollars per user month over mobile services. On another note, Micrososft is working with them very closely to convert their server farm from Cold Fusion to ASP.Net 2.0.

    • Re:3.7 billion page view per day (Score:5, Informative)

      by Timbotronic ( 717458 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @02:44AM (#15703724)
      On another note, Micrososft is working with them very closely to convert their server farm from Cold Fusion to ASP.Net 2.0.

      This is an interesting one. MySpace is written in ColdFusion but actually runs on the .NET version of BlueDragon [newatlanta.com]. BlueDragon is a .NET (or Java) application that runs ColdFusion code as an alternative to Adobe's ColdFusion server.

      So what we have currently is a situation where:
      1. Adobe can't really claim that MySpace is running ColdFusion because it's running in .NET on a competitor's server not theirs and
      2. Microsoft isn't really crowing about MySpace running .NET because it's written in a competitor's language. Not surprising that they're 'working closely' to fix that!
  • MySpace gets lots of visits because half of the visitors are returning several times an hour because the crapload of ads and layers of WMP's on autoplay crash their browser repeatedly.

    Seriously, if you try to use MySpace on a Mac, you'll be luck to get three pages deep (not counting intersititals) before your browser gives up.

    MySpace better milk it while they got it, because running their site like that means it isn't going to be popular long. The teen market is notoriously fickle and they have shorter atte
  • I think one of the reasons that Myspace is so popular is that it allows the people who use it to be able to rank their popularity using the comments and friends list, and then compare it to their friends in real life. The more friends and comments they have, the more popular(or at least to them) they will be in the real world. They don't consider the quality of what they have on their pages to be as important as how much they have. Instead of keeping there people on there friends list that are actually thei

  • "Seeing a 4300% increase in visits in just two..." (Score:4, Insightful)

    by l3v1 ( 787564 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @03:05AM (#15703763)
    Seeing a 4300% increase in visits in just two short years

    Like that would mean anything. Anyway, a few more dozen /. "news" about myspace and that figure could easily go to about twohundredgazillion percent.

    // In other news I made a site yesterday and I was the only visitor. Today there were 43 visitors.

  • MySpace has only just begun. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zaphod2016 ( 971897 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @03:07AM (#15703766) Homepage

    Recently, slashdot ran this article [cnn.com] about Ask.com's growing market share. CEO Jim Lanzone has complained that his service is superior to competitors, but has not yet approached the market share of the Google-ocracy. The reason? Like Xerox before it, Google has become a part of our common venacular in 2006 (to google, I googled it, etc). Some expect Google will remain on top for this reason alone, others claim that superior technology is how Google became #1 in the first place, and so, Ask.com has a chance.

    So what does this have to do with MySpace? MySpace currently finds itself in a similar position; unlike rivals such as Facebook or Friendster (remember them?) their market share is simply in a league all its own. I also see another important difference which secures this position for MySpace- when trying another search engine, my total expended time equals about 10 seconds; type, click, go. I don't need to register for anything, and my experience is dependant on nothing more than the latest search algorithms. With a social network, I must invest a significant amount of time in order to setup my profile, and the experience is dependant on how many friends (or similar-minded people) I can find also using the service. Once I have become comfortable using one service, I might be hesitant to "start over" at another, especially if none of my friends were using it either.

    Simply put: we have seen, and will continue to see "MySpace killers" and "MySpace clones" boasting the latest AJAX-happy Web 2.0 goodness; but will the users of MySpace take notice? If they notice, will they care enough to make a switch?

    MySpace is a very powerful web brand, and I for one think it has only just begun. If I were Rubert Murdoch, I would begin expanding the resources and revenue streams availble to it. When will "MySpace Records" begin distribution in the major retail outlets? And what about tv? How many pilot episodes is fox sitting on right now? Why allow a boardroom to make those decisions? The users on MySpace could do a better job selecting the next "big hit", all without expecting one red cent in compensation! After all, how many of these same users will be buying these same shows on DVD next year?

    As MySpace has shown us: we a nation of aspiring and puedo-celebrities. In MySpace I see the potential for hundreds of new reality tv shows, dozens of new animated series, thousands of screenplays...I could go on and on. Properly managed, MySpace can, and I believe will, become a self-sustaining, media-generating, media-consuming machine.

  • I just realized... (Score:5, Funny)

    by thebigo195 ( 949864 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @04:15AM (#15703923)
    Myspace is Slashdot's Anti-Christ.

  • Sounds Familiar (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Onan ( 25162 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @04:46AM (#15703972)

    In, oh, probably 1998 or so, I heard from a friend who worked at a tier-1 ISP that fully 2% of their total backbone traffic was to Geocities. This horrified us at the time, that such a huge portion of the 'net was devoted to people's crappy animated flame HR gifs.

    As we all know, Geocites then went on to conquer the Internet.

  • Oh great, more bandwidth wastage (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gord ( 23773 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @05:35AM (#15704044) Homepage
    Myspace users accounted for nearly 10% (2gb) of my bandwidth usage last month from my general webserving box. Mostly by people using a direct link to a 4Meg image for their background image. Fortunatly this has been largely mitigated with an apache rewrite redirecting myspace users to a polite message asking them to stop.

    However this leads me to wonder how much bandwidth myspace is sucking from non-myspace servers just so users can have pretty background pages and other assorted images. Helping support Rupert Murdoch isn't something I'm happy to waste bandwidth on.

  • heh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by playingwithknives ( 886490 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2006 @05:44AM (#15704055)
    Im 34, my beautiful, wonderful, amazing girlfriend I met through myspace is 33, my myspace friends are all mid 20s to low 40s. Ive met and socialised with some, and romanced a few too and its all been pretty damn cool so far. Its been good for finding a partner, finding friends, and finding fuckbuddies and those ive met have interests similar to mine. Seeing all the myspace hate in this thread, perhaps having a pc/mac/net enthusiast, video game playing, star trek watching, sci fi & fantasy fan female friend/or more isn't the type of thing slashdot readers are looking for? I just avoided the kiddies/teens/emo's with a simple age filter on searches and it actually turned out to be one of the better websites about for meeting new people.

    • Re:heh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by freeweed ( 309734 )
      I have a small bit of hate reserved for MySpace because everything there seems to be written like your post. Stream-of-consciousness ranting with no thought towards presentation.

      In short, like instant messaging before it, it's destroying literacy. Capitalization. Punctuation. Proper pluralization. Most importantly, sentence structure and paragraphs. All seem to be missing from 99% of MySpace pages.

      It took me a few minutes to decipher just what it was you were trying to say with "perhaps having a pc/mac/net

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