Internet Stuuffs

MySpace Loses Ground to Facebook

We all knew it was only a matter of time before it happened, and I’m not exactly sure when it happened. But Alexa has swapped the standings of MySpace and Facebook. A few weeks ago they were #5 and #7 respectively, now MySpace has slipped down to #7 while Facebook has risen to #5. This ushers in the era of a new champion in social networking.

Facebook started it’s climb as a well funded venture by a Harvard drop out. The site caught on with college students nation-wide as a cleaner, more mature networking site alternative. Features like the ’status update’ and and the ability to build and integrate third party applications set facebook out from the crowd and catapulted them over other contenders for the crown like friendster, bebo and hi5.

This also shows how quick a $580million acquisition can sour on a company like News Corp which, a few years ago, banked on MySpace to be a cash cow and largely made it’s money back by inking a $900 million deal with Google’s Adsense. Since the purchase MySpace has been playing catchup to FB adding in the ability to change status, watch feeds about friends, install and build applications and other features that facebook introduced, but all the money in the world couldn’t keep the inevitable collapse from happening.

This could mean trouble for other major internet companies out there that haven’t been 100% on their game lately. What about ebay, YouTube, Craigslist and others.. their positions as leaders of their market segments are all in jeopardy. None of them are in any real danger in the top 100 but the internets are humming with possibile alternatives to all of them

As a a sidenote Social Networking site ‘Skyrock.com’ has risen to #39 over taking Tagged.com, Friendster and Orkut as the worlds fifth largest social networking site. Friendster drops to #6 taking spot #44 in the Alexa top 100.

Here is the entire listing:
1. Facebook - #5
2. MySpace - #7
3. Hi5 - #17
4. V Kontakte - #24
5. Skyrock.com - #39
6. Friendster - #44
7. Tagged.com - #79
8. Orkut - #86
9. Bebo - #99
10. PerfSpot - #123