If you always thought MySpace was pointless, guess what, the kids are starting to agree -- at least according to The Washington Post. And of course, it's not just MySpace: The story says:
One key measure of a site's popularity is the amount of time a user stays on the site. Tracked over time, such usage data for older networking sites frequented by young people show how popularity gradually rises then falls, like an inchworm's back.
Take Xanga, the hot social networking site before MySpace: In October 2002, the typical Xanga user spent an average of 1 hour and 39 minutes a month on the site, a figure that declined steadily, reaching only 11 minutes last month, according to Nielsen-NetRatings. Friendster, another older site, hit its first usage peak of 1 hour and 51 minutes in October 2003, and then hit another peak of 3 hours and 3 minutes in February 2006. But last month, the average user was on Friendster for a mere 7 minutes.
MySpace usage ramped up heavily during its first year and a half, hitting 2 hours and 25 minutes in October last year. Then it dropped to about 2 hours and held relatively steady there for the past year. Facebook, a younger networking site, is still on a gradual incline, reaching 1 hour and 9 minutes last month .
Comment: MySpace is still growing as it reaches the mainstream, and it may take off outside the US, as Orkut did in Brazil. But attention is already shifting to other sites, such as Snapvine.com, PLyrics.com, Picgames.com.
It's a familiar cycle on the Web. Hard to remember when Alta Vista was the most popular search engine and Yahoo bought home page site GeoCities for an amazing $3.56 billion in stock.
