Comments on: MySpace

By: R

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 10:27:37 +0000

Whatch out this site : http://www.mailtomusic.com

By: Markus

Markus — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:23:34 +0000

I think the nielson and comscore numbers are highly suspect. Both of them use spyware applications to get installed on users machine. Nielson and comscore report my site as having 185 uniques a month. Webtrends, google analytics etc report it as having over 2.2 million uniques a month. At any rate even if the numbers are correct the higher your uniques to pageviews ratio the lower your max CPM rate. I talked to the company that fills myspaces inventory and they said they are lucky if they get 5 cents a CPM. Not only that there aren’t enough advertisers willing to buy up the inventory at that price.

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 10:12:08 +0000

Hey John,

I just wanted to point out my second post on social networks is up, well a working draft atleast. Your post about Myspace really got me going with it. Hopefully, you've had time to read the first one. Same pasword to log-in.

Brad

By: Joe Hunkins

Joe Hunkins — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 01:18:28 +0000

John's noted that the relationship between user, advertiser, and medium is critical, and that community sites and blogs need a better advertising paradigm than adsense to optimize things for everybody.

Somebody get on that right away!

By: Robert Young

Robert Young — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 01:10:32 +0000

I wrote about this topic as well, about a month ago over on Om Malik’s blog… http://gigaom.com/2005/11/03/my-space-part-deux/.

By my calculations, MySpace’s optimal revenue model should yield them about $500 million (assuming current traffic/ad inventory levels).

Consequently, Ross Levinsohn (ceo of FIM) just last week projected fiscal 2006 revenues to increase sixfold to $300 million… http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,177856,00.html. Not too shabby, and right on track!

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:52:50 +0000

I don’t think Friendster is a great precedent for the sustainability of MySpace’s business. I don’t have the exact number on hand, but I think Friendster peaked at about 900k monthly uniques whereas MySpace is at about 24m right now. The scale is completely different and given that this business has, by definition, network effects, I think the sustainability is pretty good.

By: Jessi Hempel

Jessi Hempel — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:09:35 +0000

I wrote a social networking story last week for BusinessWeek, and I've referred to the 10% figure you mention in your blog a couple of times in various stories. It's Nielsen/NetRatings' calculation for the share of advertising impressions for October. It has lingered around 10% the last couple of months. According to folks at Nielsen/Netratings, this means that one of every ten ads viewed online in October was viewed on MySpace - it does not mean that 10% of all internet ads were on MySpace and it does not give any indication as to the effectiveness of the advertising. It does signal that a grand number of folks are spending loads of time on the site.

Here's the story, in case you are interested: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_50/b3963001.htm

By: Nick P

Nick P — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:33:38 +0000

The youth crowd is pretty fickle though… take a look at the mass exodus from friendster. That, and they often use more than one social networking service (see facebook for example). Myspace differentiates on music and personalization, but that’s a model that can be replicated.

My question – right now Myspace is hot, but what if something more compelling comes along in the social networking scene? I’m not sure Myspace is as safe a bet as a Google/Yahoo/MSN for keeping those numbers, whereas its harder to imagine someone showing up and outdoing the search giants anytime soon due to the sheer difficulty of the problem (and the technology & IP involved). Nevertheless it looks like Fox got a great deal.

By: Mike Masnick

Mike Masnick — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 20:05:23 +0000

We discussed this last month on Techdirt:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051102/1118219_F.shtml

The reporter in that case claimed that the numbers come from Nielsen. I've seen other reports saying they found similar numbers at Comscore.

Still, something is very fishy about the numbers. If it's true that they're really getting 10% to 12% (as the article we discussed claimed) of all online ad views, then their ad sales people are doing a terrible job -- because they're making very little off of those ads.

So, either the numbers are wrong or they need to fire their ad sales staff -- neither situation reflects well on MySpace.

At the same time, I'm sick of reporters simply parroting this claim without questioning it (as I noted in my original post), so thanks, John, for questioning it.

Any reporter worth his or her notebook should be asking these questions rather than simply repeating what MySpace's PR staff is claiming.

By: Markus

Markus — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:11:20 +0000

When the comments are taken at face value they are true. Those adveritising numbers are released by the internet advertising bureu every month.

However when looking at the details they will never get anywhere near 10% of the advertising dollars.

1. The average myspace user views 500 pages per month.

The click through rate on a myspace campaign is probably 1 in 15,000 page impressions. If you look at google the CTR is around 80%.

In other words not all page impressions are created equally. 1 Google page impression is probably worth 13,000 page impressions on myspace.

No one doing direct response marketing would be dumb enough to try and recruit people from myspace. That leaves only brand advertisers, who get a very quesionable return as myspace users basically ignor every ad.