May 25th, 2006

Has the MySpace Downturn Begun?

by Scott Karp

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Guy Kawasaki held a focus group with six teenagers — this is a small sample, of course, but their view of MySpace is telling:

Two panelists were MySpace users. The others expressed a certain backlash and purposeful resistance to the addiction of MySpace. One 14 year old used to be an active MySpace user but stopped after the police came to her school to warn the students about various dangers lurking there.

This points to two key MySpace vulnerabilities (among many):

1. When a fad becomes overhyped, teens will eventually retreat
2. Most teens know that MySpace isn’t entirely safe

After reading this, I went to check out MySpace’s latest Alexa chart:

MySpace Traffic May 23 2006

Could it be that MySpace peaked in April? The traffic chart sure looks a dot com stock chart circa April 2000 — the run up always looks like it will never end…until it does.

Come to think of it, Facebook is looking kind of downish, too:

Facebook Traffic May 23 2006

Well, anyway, just wondering.

UPDATE

David Krug and others think the MySpace dip is cyclical, driven by spring break, finals, etc. Well, hmmm. Most spring breaks fall in March or early April — so it appears that extra free time drove MySpace to its peak — and then what? Studiousness swept the land as people got an early jump on studying for finals in mid April? And wouldn’t there have been a similar seasonal downturn last year?

MySpace Traffic May 24 2006 - Two Years

Yeah, seasonality, that’s go to be it. And that’s right, I have fallen out of touch with teenage psychology. I forgot how conformist teenagers are — of course they will continue to embrace MySpace now that’s gone totally mainstream. It’s totally hip to do what everyone else is doing.

Given David’s brilliant seasonal theory, I wonder when we should see the sharp upturn as everyone finds time to rush back to MySpace.

UPDATE #2

I’ve been told that I’m “so out of touch with this age group,” so I’m bringing in an outside expert (from “For Teens, MySpace.com Is Just So Last Year“) — “Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher for the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Lenhart has studied teens’ online behavior since the late 1990s”:

“Teens will go where their friends go,” she said. “They’re always looking for new places to gather. If those places become viewed as more regulated, they’ll move on.”

This is my favorite observation:

Teens like Larios are increasingly finding other social networks that meet their needs — and that aren’t as well known to their parents.

MySpace’s notoriety could be a turnoff for young people who are looking for an online community of their own

Parents know all about MySpace — yeah, that really makes it a long-term winner for teens.

UPDATE #3

Since I can’t respond to this Bloggers Blog post on their site, I’ll do so here. It looks like they got their apples and oranges confused — they posted the Alexa REACH chart for MySpace to counter my posting of the PAGE VIEW chart:

MySpace Reach May 24 2006

So the reach is flat and the page views have dropped.

Yeah, must be because kids are spending more time outside. I guess we’ll have to check back in December.

For the record, I have no interest in declaring MySpace “dead” — just deeply, deeply vulnerable.

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Topics: Hype | MySpace

  • If to speak about safety of information of course none of the internet sources is safe. So we must watch our children when they use them.
  • Robert Poole Jr
    Another reason people might be turning away from MySpace is the ridiculous site glitches. Never have I seen a site with more issues logging in or with general functionality.

    It's frustrating to make 20 attempts to log in and it's worse to have to check daily to see if things are working on your site. The music and video issues are frequent and now with people figuring out the easy way to spam the system with fake accounts and viruses it may not be worth all the hassle that it takes to login to the thing.

    They just started MySpaceIM but I can't see anyone signing up for it to use a new IM service when they can use AIM or Yahoo and programs like Trillian let you do both at the same time all in one smaller, non-spyware loaded program.

    MySpace may just need to redirect and work on itself to fix the major turnoffs they have created themselves.

    Rp
  • anthony Punnett
    everyone loves to knock the guy at the top BUT facts are a little off. Look at all the top sites in the same time period, they seem to follow the same pattern....the fact that the new york times is chiming in without checking those facts really lowers my opinion of the paper and the writer (sad)...sound more like a story for the NY Post (a newscorp pub)...and comparing myspace to geocities is a bad idea. Geocities was about self expression but not identification with others, where myspace is about both and has an install base, a consumer mindset and a tool set that are worlds apart. A HUGE factor is that geocities was pre-digital camera and the opportunity for identity production was very limited back in the day...don't get me started...I used to write a journal on geocities, does that mean that blogs are a fad? (not as long as they continue to optimize google algorithms) there are definitely ways myspace can fail but it is theirs to loose... as long as they evolve the platform. It is not going to because it is uncool with teens… Teens want empowerment and efficiency, just like everyone else...and myspace will stay “cool” as long as they stay true to that theme.
  • I think your post is very important and that you have brought up many truths. The NET will continue to evolve, and I would not be surprised to see MySpace take a back seat to "the next big thing," whatever that may be ( a Social Network version of YouTube, Perhaps?) I referenced your post in an article posted to my blog today:

    http://capitalregionpeople.blogspot.com/2006/06/reboot8.html
  • Kevin
    MySpace will slowly decline to nothing. Not really soon, but it will happen

    Right now, the biggest usage of MySpace is comming from teens. It's a fad, everyone has it, everyone talks about it. It's what's cool and popular. But as the current teens who have it grow older, they'll start using it less. And the younger generation won't jump onto MySpace as quickly. Younger kids don't want to just copy what older kids are doing. They want to look for individuality from their older brother or sisters. Sure some might jump on the bandwagon because they want to be just like their siblings and such, but in reality younger generations are going to look for something BESIDES MySpace because MySpace isn't new and hip. It's so old and what the past generations used- they won't be a copycat

    Just like fashions, MySpace will fade for the simple reason of the human drive for individuality. You can personalize a MySpace all you want, but as long as the older kids used to do it, it's not ganna be the same for the younger generation

    -Kevin
  • Greg Jansen
    MySpace is not disappearing. People love to say this - and even the teens love to say it because it makes them look cool, like when the band they like becomes too popular. Whatever theyre saying, the stats don't support it. MySpace is still registering over 240,000 peole a day. You can watch the numbers.

    Bebo and Nexopia are not taking users away from MySpace. No one is leaving MySpace for these sites. Bebo is big in Ireland and New Zealand, where MySpace was never dominant. Nexopia hasn't grown in a year. Check the traffic charts.

    People love to cite Friendster's demise as the example of teens "fickle" behavior. Big news #1: teens didnt use Friendster. It was 18 & up and teens were barely aware of it by the time it peaked and "went away." Big news #2: Friendster peeked at a paltry 1.5 million US uniques per month before it leveled out and now sits at 1 million US users a month. Myspace on the other hand, has grown its US uniques every month and is now at a whopping 49 million US uniques. It's a little harder to disappear when you have 49 million people instead of 1.5 million. These stats come from Nielsen netratings, a professional paid traffic search guide. It tells you a lot more than Alexa, and its more accurate.

    MySpace is here to stay.
  • I'm digging what you're doing with this blog and the discussions that ensue so my critique is in the spirit of that discussion.

    All this discussion about teens and Guy's asked 6 of them? That's a good starting point and I need to go see what he came up with but it's just that, a place to start developing questions and figuring out where to go. It doesn't tell us what's happening beyond the world of those 6 kids. But at least Guy's talking to actual teenagers.

    Until we have a clear demographic breakdown of Alexa's installed base, it seems totally nuts to think that it would have any strong relationship to teen usage. Why would a teen download the thing in the first place? If they're on a family computer where someone older installed it, sure. But we don't know and there's nothing cool about Alexa from a teen's perspective, I would guess. But then we're all guessing from what I can tell.

    But if it is logical that some teens will move on and the older user base of MySpace (like myself who, like a lot of music folks, are still finding it useful) is already annoyed at the tech problems, MySpace has serious problem ahead since I don't really see MySpace addressing any of these concerns.

    Adding videos that I can't watch on my Mac just isn't enough. I get the feeling that they're focusing on the monetization issue at the expense of the product and I doubt I have to explain myself to anyone that agrees with that point.

    It's fascinating to watch, that's for sure.
  • David G
    Dude - I'm usually the first to argue that MYSPACE won't last forever BUT .... pageviews are a totally false place to look for that trend.

    Spring-break-Spring-shmake, the downward trend coincides with the MYSPACE IM launch - if you understand MYSPACE, you will expect PV's to be canobilized by IM because most MYSPACE pages are "chats" - so, an "offline" chat channel in the MYSPACE community means that (some of) the conversation moves off the web-pages and into IM. The reach curve above seems to support this theory - it also seems to be hitting some upper bound which may be the big story here. I'm not an insider, so don't have the data, but to me it looks like the IM tool's seen positive adoption - which is probably a good thing from a cost control perspective.
  • hi Scott! More telling than Alexa stats (which can always be called into question) is the "coolness factor." If MySpace continues to lose "coolness," then its popularity will wane (which seems to be what happened with Friendster.) Trying to say what will be successful by looking at teens, esp. young teens, is a short-sighted strategy. We all grow up, we all change. Are any of us still doing stuff we did when we were in our teens, 20's or (for some of us) our 30?. And teens of one "generation" rarely do what teens of another "generation" do. If MySpace isn't officially on the downturn yet, eventually it will be. That's the nature of fads.

    It also doesn't help that the most prominent folks in many communities speaking to parents about MySpace, and blogging happens to be law enforcement officials. When you think about it, that's not only bad, but sad. Bloggers need to be educating others about this Web 2.0 space, not agenda-laden law enforcement folks.
  • I agree with Matthew Ingram and i think a question is the best answer for this.

    "Do your children wear the same clothes, shoes, hairstyles to school that you did?"
  • I am very reluctant to make any comments on statistics provided by Alexa. If you pay attention to how Alexa gets statistics, you will realize that their data is not that reliable. In market research terms, let's just say that Alexa's representativeness is at best questionable (personnaly, I believe that there is a lot of manipulation of Alexa statistics since panellists are self-selected). I hope that Hitwise, which has much more reliable data, will release some stats about MySpace in the near future.

    That being said, MySpace may have reached its peak, at least in the US. Analysts should keep in mind though that International markets are just starting to be unsing social networks, which might change the game.
  • Billy K
    I'm not a teen. I'm in my 30s, active in local music (which is what got me stuck on MySpace int he first place), and let me tell ya - even among my peers (20-40s) MySpace usage is way, way down. I see fewer people online, fewer blogs, way fewer emails from friends, and fewer bulletins (thank God for the respite from surveys).

    MySpace has peaked. It has hit a wall that is a combination of people realizing it's not really that cool after all, and (most importantly) the incredible frustration one feels when MySpace craps out - an almost daily occurrence.

    You can't have one of the biggest sites on the internet if it's down several times a week. Instead of rushing to add useless features, they should have been strengthening their infrastructure. Now they will pay for that mistake, just like Friendster before them.
  • Alan
    I don't believe the dip is cyclical. If it was, there would have been a sharp rise in Aug/Sept as the kids came back to school. I don't have a better explanation other than this is more of a levelling off than a drop. Aren't all the kids on myspace already?
  • Anyone ever thing this might have something to do with the weather is nice and people are outside enjoying their REAL lives? Just a thought.
  • Jeez David, I certainly have my disagreements with Scott, but don't you think that's a bit harsh?
  • Max, right on about Alexa. The impetus for the post was the teen focus group -- I just threw in the Alexa chart for fun -- but of course you know how it is with pictures.

    You'll notice that most of the MySpace defenders focused on the chart and explanations about seasonality, etc. But no one's denying the substantive issues that point to MySpace's vulnerabilities.
  • You're intuitive and asking good questions. But you shouldn't trust Alexa with a ten-foot pool. Alexa's great, it's free -- but it represents Alexa users, not Internet users. And who the heck puts Alexa toolbars in their browsers???

    I checked MySpace traffic usage data as estimated by Hitwise U.S. usage data, and the dip you see with Alex is not present. Then again, I was only looking at U.S. usage data. There, in fact, could be a dip outside of the U.S., but it's a very U.S.-centric site. Back to my original point: Alexa is great and it's free, but it represents Alexa users.
  • That's right, Sebastian, every hype machine needs an anti-hype machine -- and granted, it's a whole lot easier to be iconoclastic than to keep the statue from falling off the pedestal.
  • Sebastian
    But cmon...Scott has to push his 'MySpace is a time bomb' orthodoxy to counter all the Web 2.0 orthodoxy! Those durned kids and their advertising-unfriendly social network anyhow.
  • I think this is a bit presumptuous. If you look at the traffic patterns of all top 5 web properties including MSN, Yahoo, Ebay, and even Google, you will see that they ALL take a down turn in late may and into the summer. We see this in the online ad biz every year around this time. The weather warms up, people are out of school, they are on vacation, they are outside...its a seasonal trend that happens every year. I know everyone is very anxious to declare MySpace dead, but this is a bit of a reach.
  • Yep, Matthew is dead-on. It's almost impossible to create a fad-resistant brand, especially if your demographic is teens. It's definitely going to take an alternative service to unseat MySpace as there's still a clear need for what MySpace does for people, but we're getting to the point now where those services exist and people are finding out about them.

    Part of what's bad about experiencing a long, awesome increase in traffic like MySpace has is that you get cocky. You don't update things that need updating, you don't lock down things that need locking down. You kind of just do what you can and ride the wave. Every major competitor of MySpace has been doing a lot more than that for the last year, so theoretically, minus the audience, these competitors are already in better shape.
  • Dude -- you got called "dorkness." That's harsh. I happen to think you're totally right though, as I wrote in a recent piece about MySpace and social networks for globeandmail.com. MySpace is hot now, but teen audiences are the most fickle market ever invented. Already places like Bebo and Nexopia are growing, in part because MySpace has gone (or is becoming) mainstream, and mainstream is the kiss of death. Rupert had better hurry up and find a way of monetizing that thing before it joins Friendster in the dustbin of history.
  • My kid's fancy dance private school in Manhattan didn't get the police...they got a Secret Service agent warning them about the dangers of MySpace! Feel safer now about TWOT?
  • ted
    any site having to do explicitly with students such as facebook will see a significant downturn during the summer.
  • other possible explanations...

    finals? summer starting?

    both are so large now, cyclical stuff will start to set in. particularly w/ facebook.
  • Hello It's called Spring Break, Finals, and All kinds of Summer Nonsense you idiot. You are so out of touch with this age group. Dorkness.
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