Recent figures show MySpace’s decline in freefall, with the once-don of social networking sites rapidly shedding value and losing hundreds of millions for its parent company, News Corp.
Numbers released by web analytics firm Compete.com make uncomfortable reading for Murdoch and Co, with US traffic spiralling in a downwards direction from 55.6 million unique visitors in August to 50.2 million in September.
According to Compete.com, MySpace has lost a hefty 20% of its U.S. traffic since June, with the exodus of users accelerating at a terrifying rate of knots.
The site lost over a million U.S. visitors between June and July, and the losses soared to 4 million between July and August, and it gets even worse for September, where Compete calculate that no less than 5 million users departed MySpace’s shores.
Things certainly aren’t looking good for MySpace, with April’s management drama (where they booted out Chris DeWolfe and brought in former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta) failing to plug the leaking users.
Some half-arsed redesigns haven’t helped either (it’s still a dreadful site to use), but we’d hate to see it vanish forever as it still forms a vital resource for bands and club promoters – we rely on it for our London club nights.
Facebook and Twitter stall
Figures from Compete. com also show that in the US, the explosive growth of Twitter and Facebook has now levelled out but, like MySpace, Bebo is also suffering a hefty loss in users.
The figures bring into question just how much facebook can continue to grow – it’s already huge – although there would seem to be ample space for the smaller Twitter to keep on growing.
