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MySpace Makes it to Top 10 Internet Sites

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the emo-teens-have-spoken dept.

prostoalex writes "Nielsen//NetRatings Top 10 is a monthly rating of top 10 Internet destinations. Generally dominated by Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, AOL, eBay and similar major destinations, the list had a newcomer in March of this year. MySpace.com is 10th most visited Web site, losing to #9 Real.com only by 600,000 unique visits per month."

43 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. in other news by Loconut1389 · · Score: 5, Funny

    after the slashdot appearance of the article, MySpace.com is now #4.

    1. Re:in other news by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ugh, no thanks. That place is the most awful cespool on the Internet. 42TB pages, everybody's got their own shit music playing as if whoever visits wants to hear it, all for the privilege of girls with 6 inches of cake makeup posing for cleavage shots, guys dressed up like Gotti with one eyebrow raised, and the most inane, unintelligible comments imaginable, with a page width of 9,000 pixels because somebody posted a picture of a duck flying into a window with the caption "PWNED!" 14 years ago.

      --
      <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
    2. Re:in other news by Firehed · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Apparently I've avoided myspace better than you so I never had to put up with it. It's worse than I thought. Hopefully people will realize that static backgrounds are so 1996. Funny how that is... back when I was learning to code html in notepad, my websites looked about the same, but everything was lower resolution and I actually had to do it myself.

      They might as well just call it n00bspace.

      What really freaks me out is real.com at #9. Who the hell goes to real.com? Surely there isn't that big of a market for doing nothing but downloading the unquestionably worst media player in existance. Unless myspace makes you have realplayer installed to put up with the annoying crap in everyone's pages, so they've got the entire community of 'omg lookit me I've got my own website!!11' noobs worldwide, plus the odd person who actually thinks it's worthwhile.

      Maybe I'm just being overly fond of the days when even geeks had dialup and having your own 15mb web presence on Geocities was the cool thing to do (mine's still there!) You'd think that since you can get a domain plus enough hosting to do a mypsace page without the noob for about $30 a year, people might go for that option. Honestly, is myspace.com/noob any more attractive of a site address than geocities.com/noob? Why be a crappy wannabe when you can have noob.com and use your host's page builder app and do wannabe right?

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    3. Re:in other news by Eneff · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I, like you, missed the entire point of myspace for a few months.

      I still don't like it, but I understand it now. It's much like hanging out in a trendy nightclub. At home, I can make the drinks better, I have better taste in decor (what, dragons on the walls isn't better?), and I have full control of my castle.

      But the nightclub is where all the people are!

      It's a way to connect with all of your friends, with a common identification system. Yes, it's ugly as fuck, but that's not the point.

    4. Re:in other news by sacdelta · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I found it even more useful as a way to reconnect with people you haven't seen in awhile. I don't remember why I originally set up the page, but I managed to be found by people I haven't seen in 5-10 years. People who wandered to other parts of the globe. Of course I've had to deal with some more annoying aspects too, but the benefits definitely outweighed the costs. I just keep my friends list to people I've actually met in real life.

      Different people get different things out of it. For me it's a way to update all of my friends in one spot. For others it is a competition to get as many friends on their list as possible.

      I've also found it quite useful in discovering new music. I tend to listen to some of the more obscure genres so I can't hear the new stuff on the radio (except for the occasional college station). By looking at who is linked to bands I like, I can check them out, get a sample of their music and then decide if I want to hear more or not.

      --

      Brought to you by: "Al"toids - the curiously weird mint.

    5. Re:in other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Who the hell goes to real.com?

      Two things:
      1. I believe the Real Player loads the real.com page in its "minibrowser", so anyone who uses Real and doesn't shut off the minibrowser goes there regularly.
      2. These ratings are generally gathered from clueless people who have let the survey companies install web bugs on their computer. These are exactly the kind of people who use Real Player.

  2. Content Trumps Design by RunFatBoy.net · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just goes to show, content and relationships will trump design everytime. MySpace is definite proof.

    Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise for the rest of us.

    1. Re:Content Trumps Design by moosesocks · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not always. flickr is a good example

      there were dozens of other mildly successful photography communities before flickr came along, many of which covered the social networking aspect of flickr much better.

      flickr simply has the best mix of community and design out there, hence its success among pro photographers and occasional shutterbugs alike.

      facebook is another example. It's basically a well-designed myspace for college kids with proper privacy features. It took hold in a market where dozens of other sites had failed miserably. The design's clean, the site's never been slow to memory (despite exponential growth). Because of this, it is far more prevalent than Myspace among college kids. At my medium-sized state school, I'd estimate that about 90%+ of the student body uses facebook regularly. It's that popular. It's preferred over myspace because it's fast, usable, and not creepy.

      --
      -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  3. Real? by dalutong · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Who goes to real.com?

    --

    What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
    1. Re:Real? by Odiumjunkie · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Is it possible that RealPlayer connects to real.com to display it's web portal? I don't use it myself, but I seem to remember RealPlayer displaying the web portal by default.

    2. Re:Real? by davidc · · Score: 4, Funny

      No-one intentionally goes to Real.com.

      Only reason Real.com is up there (with a long time per visit) is :-

                        Buffering... Buffering... Buffering...

    3. Re:Real? by Lendrick · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sure, Real is at number 9, but most of their traffic is to one specific page:

      http://www.real.com/support/faqs/how_the_hell_do_i _uninstall_this_damn_thing.html

  4. But by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just took this Nielson Net survey a few days ago (they sent me $15 cash!)
    It is very long, but on some of the pages I noticed that sites like slashdot where not a choice to even select. On the page where myspace was a choice of sites you visit, livejournal was not! I'm not sure how well the "write-in" box at the bottom gets counted, but I really question the integrity of the whole thing.

    1. Re:But by realityfighter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They were probably collecting data for the companies in the list. Nielsen makes its money selling consumer data, not doing unbiased research.

      --
      A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
    2. Re:But by saltydogdesign · · Score: 5, Informative

      Duh. Naked teenagers.

      --
      // This is not a sig.
  5. Re:real.com WTF? by Odiumjunkie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Equally, I'd be prepared to bet that msn.com and aol.com have such high rankings based mostly on their use as the default start page for two popular internet browsers, as opposed to explicit user desire to either surf there or use them as a home page based on anything other than lazyness.

  6. web hits vs. actual web use by Gothmolly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So Real's crappy phone-home player may send 100000000 pagehits to their site every month, but (I guess) people actually use MySpace, as retarded as it is. This is a meaningless statistic.

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
  7. Everytime Someone Goes to MySpace.... by ImaNihilist · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...the internet dies just a little bit. The future if the internet grows bleek. Some people spend so much time whoring themselves out on MySpace, that's all they use the internet for. Still, they need that 6Mbps connection because some profiles try to load 200MB of videos, sounds, CSS, cursors, and animated GIFs all at the same time.

    God save the interweb.

    1. Re:Everytime Someone Goes to MySpace.... by ImaNihilist · · Score: 4, Funny

      Fuck. I suck at life. *sigh* Only thing to do now is spend all day on MySpace.

  8. How many emo kids does it take to screw in a light by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    None, they'll just sit in the dark and cry.

  9. Now I feel better by LittleLebowskiUrbanA · · Score: 5, Funny

    Losing my faith in /. but it turns out we're all united in our hatred of MySpace.

    --
    This guy is way out there
  10. Biggest productivity-killer around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    MySpace is the worst thing for business productivity since Solitaire. We blocked MySpace a few weeks ago because it accounted for literally 10-15% of our company's outbound web traffic - I'm talking about thousands and thousands of MySpace URIs visited per day, at a company of ~75 people.

    1. Re:Biggest productivity-killer around by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 3, Funny

      One page load of a MySpace page averages around 9GB, so yeah, I could see that.

      --
      <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
    2. Re:Biggest productivity-killer around by rm999 · · Score: 3, Funny

      is it a company full of 8th graders?

    3. Re:Biggest productivity-killer around by HolyCrapSCOsux · · Score: 5, Funny
      We run a keylogger every so often as a for employees that are doing everything OTHER THAN working. Here's a neat snippet. Keep in mind that this person HAS somehow managed to graduate from high school.
      21/11/05 12:46:53 on computer ------- user ----
      in application "C:\PROGRA~1\MOZILL~1\FIREFOX.EXE" and window "Myspace.com - Mozilla Firefox"
      pressed: hey girly it was fun this weekend i had a blast messin with u guys we i hope to see u later okay well ttul niggaheyhey buddy what the hell u cant ever talk to me any more that makes me sad well happy bday and sorry that me and nick didnt go to ur party we had to help him mom with some hings but i cut his hair off i mean like his hair is only like an in. 1/2 long but i like it he looks so different though.. well happy bday again and have fun on thanks giving k well ttul nigga . -------NOT MUCH JUST CHILLIN AT WORK HAVING FUN WELL WHA U BEEN UP TO LATELY U STILL GO TOTA CO BELL ALL THE TIME... WELL TTUL ------WELL IM NOT SHORE WHEN IM DONG IT BUT AS SOON AS POSIBLE WHEN IM OUT OF SCHOOL BUT I WANT TO GO IN TO BISSINES SO I CAN START ON GETING NY OWN SALON AND WELL KNOW HOW TO RUN IT WITH OUT HAVEING PEOPLE JIP ME SO I KNOW WHAT IM DOING BUT ITS WHAT I WANT TO DO THAT WOULD BE HELLA COOL IF WE COLD DO SOME CLASSES TO GETHER THAT WOULD BE SWETTTTT WEL I TALK TO U LATER K IM GETIN OFF ARO...
      Makes you want to cry a little doesn't it?
      --
      0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
    4. Re:Biggest productivity-killer around by TheNarrator · · Score: 4, Funny

      Your post was great but I see this kind of thing all the time in really badly written emails to customer service. I think Slashdot has spoiled you. Despite all the moaning and groaning the Slashdot audience is fairly well educated and can write tolerably. You haven't had to spend a lot of time with exceptionally stupid and/or very poorly educated people since high school no doubt (if you went to public school), but they're out there and there are lots and lots of them and Myspace caters to them. I'm actually really happy that the great uneducated masses are learning to type, get a thought across at some level or another and do basic internet stuff.

  11. Sorry... by StevenHenderson · · Score: 3, Funny

    but MySpace behaves as though it were coded by fucking retarded monkeys.

    1. Re:Sorry... by Vorondil28 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      but MySpace behaves as though it were coded by fucking retarded monkeys.

      Flamebait? Yes. True? Most definitely.

      --
      This sig rocks the casbah.
  12. The Children of Myspace by cualexander · · Score: 5, Funny
    There is a video on iFilm that pokes fun of Myspace. Basically its the "Greatest Love" song by Whitney Houston.

    The one that goes, "I believe the children are our future..."

    Then it goes on to show the dumb photos that people post.

    Its funny stuff... http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2713146

  13. Cheap & Easy to Use ... but is it Classy? by rewinn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    MySpace is an apparently successful implementation of the concept that "anyone can have a useful web site without much work."

    TruGeeks may prefer to buy (actually "rent") a domain name, rent space somewhere, AND maintaine the site using the technology du jour, but for a great many people, myspace does what they need without their having to think too hard about it, or to pay for it.

    The question I still have is whether myspace URLs connote poorly, relative to unique-domain URLs, in the same way that AOL or hotmail addresses connote poorly, compared to unique-domain URLs do. In case this is unclear, let me offer an example. I think most people will agree that zzxyz@aol.com connotes something a little less classy than zzxyz@zzxyz.com. The question is, will myspace have sufficient acceptance that a URL such as http://www.myspace.com/rewinn will be an acceptable substitute for something like http://rewinn.com?

    --
    --- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
    1. Re:Cheap & Easy to Use ... but is it Classy? by ThisNukes4u · · Score: 3, Funny

      no.

      --
      thisnukes4u.net
  14. Well, duh! by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Funny

    Anywhere you can pick up lose women is bound to be popular.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  15. top quality crap. by marcushnk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Bloody impressive setup..
    I decided to go have a look and see what myspace is all about, jumped on the "tour" and then found that the second page in was broken:
    http://www.modmeup.net/wp-content/myspace-brkn.png

    Quality setup guys... :-P

    --
    "Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
  16. RealPlayer highly popular in Asia. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have seen a lot of comments here regarding why Real.com is ranked so highly. It likely is because their player does access content from their site regularly.

    Most North Americans and Europeans fail to understand how vastly popular RealPlayer is in Asia. There have been some reports of over 75% of Indian computer users using RealPlayer, since it has very good support for languages such as Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, and Hindi. It also has superb support for Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and other Asian languages, thus leading to a high degree of usage there (although not as much as in India).

  17. not your space by samnice · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm just a little suprised at the comments about MySpace. Clearly i am in a minority of /. readers who actually enjoys and uses MySpace. Granted, i only began using it a few weeks ago, but i have actually had fun using html and then teaching it to my friends so they can improve their pages. but most importantly, i have reconnected with a lot of old friends who now live in other cities. No other social networking website i have used before has been able to do that for me. The real item of interest i thought was the "average usage time" stat. MySpace users average over 2 hours/session. Thats on par with ebay and Yahoo. and twice that of Google. thats a lot of ads. ads = $ = power whether the techno-istas poo-poo it or not.

  18. Microsoft #2 ?!?! by Namlak · · Score: 5, Funny

    The question is - Is Microsoft #2 becasue of THIS page or despite it?

  19. You're an order of magnitude off by shreevatsa · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unbelievably, according to Alexa, Slashdot is only the 301st on the Global top 500. It's not in the top 100 Us sites, nor in the top 100 English sites.

    1. Re:You're an order of magnitude off by Cirvam · · Score: 4, Informative

      yeah but that only counts traffic from people with the alexa toolbar installed, which I would assume very few people here have. Due to it being (or used to be?) spyware.

    2. Re:You're an order of magnitude off by caffeination · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Which explains this:

      People there are so obsessed with beating Slashdot that many actually installed Alexa specifically so that it could track their visits to Digg.

      More such results continue on the second search page. Only on page 4 do they start to lose relevance (an interesting correlation with the study that was featured yesterday, n'est ce pas?)

  20. Linux users can be proud... by Glowing+Fish · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Usually, I like to point out that many very mainstream, popular corporate website runs on Linux, or else on commercial Unix.

    But, in this case, I think I can proudly say, Myspace is running Windows.

    Myspace on netcraft

    --
    Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
  21. *shakes head sadly* by thewrathoffluffy · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm a CS student in college right now and I can sadly say I can vouch for how out of control the myFace/Spacebook craze has gotten... Another CS friend summed it up pretty well with this quote:

    "I've almost quit telling people I'm interested in computers anymore, because I keep getting the same responce: 'Oh, so does that mean you're like good at facebook?'"

    I think I died a little bit inside when he said that...

  22. How do you get an emo kid out of a tree? by freeweed · · Score: 3, Funny

    Cut the rope.

    (joke is a bit older than the emo fad, so works equally well with their goth predecessors :)

    --
    Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
  23. Re:Contrarian Opinion : Myspace rocks! by mlylecarlin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Bands dominate myspace."

    Bands dominate YOUR myspace. Log out and try visiting as an anonymous user. From there it's pretty obvious: idiots dominate myspace.