Jennifer Whitehead, Media Week, 23 June 2008, 11:10am

Facebook's worldwide usage overtakes MySpace

LONDON - Facebook has overtaken MySpace with its number of unique visitors reaching 123 million people worldwide during May.

During the same period, 114.6 million visitors used News Corporation-owned MySpace, according to figures from ComScore,

The figures show rapid growth during the month for Facebook and is 162% above the figure for May last year. During the same period, traffic to MySpace was up by just 5%.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, has been reported in the press as hitting back at the findings by describing Facebook as a directory, not a social network. He said that the site had "done a great job of being flavour of the month in the last six months of last year".

Facebook is a private company and does not publish financial figures, but, according to a report in the Financial Times, people close to Facebook have said that it made $150m in sales last year, with that figure expected to grow to between $300m and $350m this year.

MySpace has hit back at the growing popularity of Facebook by focusing more on being an entertainment destination, particularly for those interested in music, and has also started to open the site to developers. It is updating its look to be more streamlined.

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All Comments

Russell Deeks - 23 June 2008

I don't know about anyone else but I use MySpace for work (music journalist so it's good for keeping up with new artists etc) and Facebook for keeping in touch with friends and family, and playing stupid games (come and have a go at my 60,000-stong battalion in Armies if you think your're hard enough)

IMHO the two need to ientify and then concentrate on their core strengths rather than be all things to all people. MySpace is a great bulletin board, Facebook is a great one-to-one comm'ns tool