The exploding popularity of free social networking sites is drawing online marketing dollars even in a down economy. This year MySpace celebrates its fifth anniversary with 130 million active monthly users worldwide. In the United States, MySpace is the most-viewed site on the Internet with 76 million total unique users.
The stagnant economy provides an opportune time to experiment with new marketing ideas, says H&P co-founder Barbra Pleadwell.
MySpace is just one of the growing social networking sites discussed at H&P’s New Media Communication workshop, presented recently in Hilo and Kona on the Big Island. The sessions focused on how small businesses with limited resources could benefit from simple online strategies such as blogging or participating in social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
In general we define social network sites as online communities of people who share interests and interact in a variety of ways such as email and instant messaging. Launched in January 2004, MySpace has created a connected global community by integrating web profiles, blogs, instant messaging, email, music streaming, music videos, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, college communities, and member forums.
Social network sites are free to users and operate solely on revenues generated from advertising. Results are impressive. In 2009, social network advertising is projected to make up $1.2 billion (5.1 percent) of total U.S. online ad spending. MySpace will account for 50% of the total, nearly three times that of the closest competitor.
MySpace in numbers:
• 85 percent of MySpace users are of voting age (18 or older)
• On average 300,000 new people sign up to MySpace every day
• 27 billion comments are posted on the site
• 41 million mails per day
• 8 billion friend relationships
• 18 million images uploaded daily
• 62,507 new videos uploaded to MySpace Video daily
Emmanuelle Sailor
Hastings & Pleadwell: Communicating 