from WSJ.com
It was bound to happen: Backlash against the most popular sites on the web, once so new and exciting, now tarnished by populist appeal and the fact that people like WSJ reporters know about them. Today the WSJ reports that MySpace users are growing weary of being marketed to incessantly through fake friend requests, messages, and endless ads for Asian porn (ETP has one friend — Tom — but still, the requests some in). The WSJ notes that some MySpace members are deleting their pages, though a spokeswoman has said there has been "absolutely no increase in the rate of deletions." MySpace growth, however, has plateaued, and site visits actually declined in September (Facebook did, too, but the company's data shows a rebounding later in the month). Judit Nagy, vice president of consumer insights at Fox Interactive Media (ah, the ages-old "consumer insights" department), conceded that MySpace was "moving from a growth spurt into a phase of maturity." While Facebook is still growing — it was recently opened up to anyone, not just college kids — there was backlash owing to the fact that it was recently opened up to anyone, not just college kids.
Meanwhile, SFWeekly wonders if YouTube can possibly survive after going all corporate, man. (It should be noted here that MySpace streams 20% of video streams online, compared to YouTube's 9%). It should also be noted that showing Friendster on this chart with a "down" arrow is something of an understatement, considering its been beaten pretty soundly down by MySpace (which clocks 50 times the monthly domestic visitors as Friendster). In other news, things are going just fine for newspapers.
Related: "MySpace Seminar" [SNL]
