Be wary of studies comparing apples (Yahoo, CNN) to oranges (Myspace, Facebook)
- Posted by Ephraim Cohen on April 7th, 2006 filed in Advertising, PR Strategy, Public Relations
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The Washington Post has an interesting story and a great graphic, if misleading statistics to show how Myspace.com is taking over the world is your thing (and for many, it just may be). Myspace is a hot and important media property, but stories like this and others that play up it’s influence as compared to established players like Yahoo do it a disservice (the higher they are, the harder they…).
There are a few critical differences between Myspace and other more standard high profile Web targets that communicators should note:
The first is growth vs total unique visitors. Growth for smaller companies will always be better than bigger ones. The real test is where the growth plateaus (at 70 million *regular* users or 200). ABC News’ Jonathan Silverstein writes a good article that lays out how registered and unique visitors are very different from regular, unique visitors (you can have 60 million registered visitors but only 5 million that regularly use the system – it’s the latter that matters to communicators and marketers).
The second is content vs. application. A Myspace is part content, part communications application. This means people use it like email as opposed to just visiting to read. By that type of count, Microsoft Outlook probably beats everyone in unique visitors. Some popular web sites are destinations or routers (e.g., search engines) for people wanting content, while others are Web based applications (e.g., Hotmail). Applications have far less contextual relevance as people are there to use a tool, not to find information.
Third is context. Even if Myspace has more visitors than a Yahoo or CNN, it deostn’ make it a good target. People go to CNN to read news by qualified reporters. That’s not why they go to Myspace. Likewise, they go to Yahoo to, among other things, look for information. If you want to give out injformation, meet them at Yahoo not at Myspace where they are busy doing other things.
Myspace seems to be a powerful site. Even if it’s around for the long haul, it’s still one media property of many and should be used not becuase it’s popular, but becuase it has the right, active (unique and regular users) user based and the right context.
