My Space and Wiki Tours
Christopher Harris of Infomancy has created a MySpace Travel Guide that is worth reading. While I was at ALA2006 in New Orleans, several YALSA members were quoting the stats on MySpace traffic percentages of the internet. I’m not sure if everyone is looking at the same set of data, but Christopher quoted these facts:
“According to Alexa, an internet traffic analysis site, MySpace is the number 5 site in the world and number 3 in the US - surpassed only by Yahoo and Google. If, however, you look at page views, MySpace can’t be touched. MySpace currently accounts for about a quarter of page views of people who use the Alexa toolbar…and trust me, that is NOT the target audience for MySpace!”
I went to Alexa myself to check out some of the traffic and see which other sites were suggested as similar to MySpace. I think the list is incomplete, but you should go look and decide for yourself.
While you are touring and learning, check out Meredith Farkas post on Information Wants to Be Free. She will be conducting an online training for Wikis called Wiki: The Ultimate Tool For Online Collaboration I am very excited about this. Hope to see you in the LiveMeeting.
Diane: Thanks for the mention. I just wanted to provide a bit more information on the site traffic statistics. I heard a presentation by Stephen Abrams where he said that at the end of this June, MySpace would account for about 50% of the Internet traffic. I wasn’t able to find a citation for that, though.
Alexa reports on site traffic, but it is a limited view of the Internet in that it only tracks usage by people who have downloaded and installed the Alexa toolbar. Granted, there are a lot of people who use the toolbar, but they might not represent a true cross-section of all users. Still, for MySpace to rank as high as it does in a group for which it isn’t targeted says quite a bit!
Comment by Christopher Harris — July 10, 2006 @ 11:29 am
The third paragraph mentioning elementary school librarians and others reactions to us was most informative.
Comment by joyce lund — August 17, 2006 @ 2:54 pm