MySpace.com popularity drains
By Victoria Shelor, staff writer
Posted on November 6, 2006

Like most fads, the social-networking community MySpace.com has enjoyed much popularity since its inception two-and-a-half years ago. But has the novelty worn off? Some say interest in MySpace is declining as people swap to its younger rival, Facebook.com.

“MySpace was something everyone was using to communicate online before we were in college.” said sophomore Mallory Micetich, who has had a MySpace page for several years. “Now that Facebook is available, I don’t use MySpace as much.”

MySpace and Facebook are social-networking Web sites offering members the opportunity to exchange messages and pictures, connect with old friends and make new ones, all without leaving your desk. Many people spend hours creating a MySpace profile page filled with pictures, graphics and other information.

A Web site’s popularity is often measured by the amount of time visitors spend on the site. According to the Washington Post, MySpace reached a peak of two hours and 25 minutes last year and has since dropped and plateaued at about two hours. Facebook has been on a gradual incline reaching one hour and nine minutes last month, according to the Post.

“I haven’t created a MySpace page because I thought the idea was kind of creepy,” junior Eleni Menoutis said. She heard of some stalker-related incidents of members accessing information such as addresses and phone numbers from other members’ profiles.

“I found out you can make your account private, like on Facebook, so I decided to join, mainly to design my own Web page,” Menoutis said.

The option to set one’s profile to private so that only that member’s friends can view their page is perhaps an attempt by MySpace to court more users or to retain current members.

This change makes the network slightly more exclusive and more like Facebook.

MySpace representatives could not be reached for comment.

However, Facebook recently made changes to its site, adding high schools and businesses to the originally college-only network. 

“MySpace was more of a high school thing,” Micetich said. “I only check my MySpace every once in a while now.”