By Alex Goodstein

The use of social networking websites is nothing new to college students. Many students use one or more online social networking websites on a daily basis. Two years ago, 85% of college student said that they were registered users of Facebook.comi.  This number has continued to grow, with Facebook.com now having over 63 million usersii.  The world’s most popular social networking website, MySpace.com, has over 110 Million active usersiii.  MySpace and Facebook rank seventh and sixth respectively in global access according to the Alexa rankingsiv.  However, these websites were not always at the top of the list, and someday their popularity may begin to decline, especially as alternative social networking sites begin to appear.  Here, the question is whether there is an actual decline in the use of an individual social networking site when a new site enters the market.

I had initially planned to predict the decline of Facebook.com based on the previous decline of other social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Xanga.com. Unfortunately, after performing some basic research, I found the opposite to be true.  The majority of social networking websites are actually growing faster than ever. According to Alexa, five of the top twenty websites are social networking websites. Each continent has a social networking website that its inhabitants tend to prefer. Europe uses Hi5.com, which ranks eighth, Asia uses Friendster.com, which ranks sixteenth, and South America uses Google-owned Orkut.com, which ranks tenth.  America is a split between Facebook.com and MySpacev.  Judging by these rankings, there is no true decline in the use of any individual social networking website, except for Xanga.com, which appears to be hemorrhaging regular users. Xanga.com’s Alexa ranking has dropped from 60 to 105 in less than a yearvi,vii.  However, with so many social networking websites on the rise, why do people believe that, when a new site appears, all others decline?

Xanga.com was one of the earliest social networking sites that high school and college students fell in love with. They offer user profiles, picture storage, blogs and more. However, in a social network dominated society, why is it that Xanga.com has lost so many users? First, Xanga is not completely free.  In addition,  many other social networking websites have begun to add or adapt features in order to gain interest. MySpace.com started in 1999, about the same time as Xanga.com.  However, it was not until late 2004 that the popularity of MySpace.com began to increase significantly.  MySpace eventually surpassed Xanga.com’s popularity in 2006.  Early on, MySpace.com actually offered fewer features than Xanga.com.  However, with the increasing popularity of MySpace.com came additional features.

Possible reasons for Xanga.com’s decline was their introduction of privacy controls before MySpace.com, and the fact that News Corp. purchased MySpace.com.  News Corp.’s purchase of MySpace.com provided them with the financial backing needed to expand their site significantly.  Once users discovered MySpace.com, they began to abandon their Xanga.com profilesviii,ix. The initial creation of Facebook.com did not pose a threat to MySpace.com as the preferred social networking site, and today this is still the case.  When Facebook.com was originally created in 2004, it was meant as a simple “social utility” for college studentsx.  It has since expanded past college students to include high school students, and currently, anyone can join Facebook.  However, MySpace.com does not appear to be losing users and registrations to Facebook.com.  It is important to note here that approximately 64% of Facebook.com users also use MySpace.com on a regular basisxi.   MySpace.com and Facebook.com both appear to serve different demographics.

Facebook.com is meant for those in college and the business world. MySpace.com, on the other hand, appeals more to the teen scene, much like its predecessor Xanga.com.  MySpace also appeals to those who like the idea of self-expression, and those who are looking for a place to promote their music, film or artwork.  Another theory is that those who are dual-users no longer want to abandon their profiles because they have invested a great deal of time into their creation and updatingxii. However, this still does not explain why some people are under the belief that MySpace.com is declining.

The idea that MySpace.com is losing popularity comes from those who have fled MySpace.com and joined other social networking sites, such as Facebook.com. The original dissenters left MySpace.com in order to join Facebook.com due to the exclusive college-only community that Facebook offered. Now, it seems likely that people believe that MySpace.com is declining due to the increased popularity of Facebook.com.  People also seem to believe that MySpace.com is declining due to their over-saturation with advertising and malicious content, including pornographic spam messages and false friend requests.  Even with all these issues, people still log-in to MySpace.com regularly, and many still use it as there primary social networking website.

A majority of social networking sites are not on the decline.  Rather, they merely appear to decline when a new and trendy social networking site is born and attracts a great deal of interest. Only when the next trendy social networking site appears will users begin to believe Facebook.com is on a decline. Another sign that might signal the downfall of Facebook.com is the introduction of open-source applications. Facebook applications were created in order to allow users to customize their profiles, similar to the way that they can on MySpace.com.
Unfortunately, the applications are beginning to get out of hand because of their ability to send spam-like messages to other users.  Many users are ignoring the fact that the majority of their friends do not want to deal with applications like “Am I Hot” or “What Type of Bride are You,” especially these users that originally joined Facebook.com due to its conformity and simplicity. Because they are open-source, these applications are also beginning to host malicious content and ads like MySpace.com.  It is those who are aggravated by these new features who will be the first to jump ship when the next trendy social networking site is created.  It can be estimated that this false decline will not occur for at least another 12-18 months, according to the past trends of MySpace.com, Xanga.com, and Facebook.com.  Until then, users will continue to hypocritically complain about MySpace.com and Facebook.com while they spend hours a day checking and updating both.