Facebook overtakes MySpace – Rupert Murdoch whinges
Rupert Murdoch was reduced to petty slants today as figures for May showed that for the first time Facebook attracted more unique users than MySpace.
The media barren, whose News Corp bought MySpace in 2005, described their usurping rivals as “flavour of the month”, not a real social network and simply a “directory” after Facebook amassed 123.9 million users, nearly 10 million more than MySpace.
Being the world’s leading expert on web 2.0 and the inventor of the concept of social networking, I would normally defer to what Murdoch has to say, of course, but 10 million users can’t be wrong, eh Rupe?
A more sensible opinion on the figures came from MySpace co-founder, and everyone’s first friend, Tom Anderson who said:
“A lot of people thought it was too hard to use, they thought it was a music site, or a content site. Privacy was a concern, or they’d say it was a site for teenagers,” and I’d be inclined to agree with most of that.
Facebook seems to suffer from the last two as much as MySpace but you only have to look at the number of copycat social networking sites that use the Facebook template to see how much more user friendly, simple and popular it is.
Despite Murdoch’s mud slinging and MySpace’s introduction of third party applications, I can only see the gap continuing to grow. If the News Corp chief wasn’t worried, wouldn’t he have just said it was a blip?
(via Sydney Morning Herald)
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