Is MySpace Really Larger than Yahoo?

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006;
-- Andy Beal |

So, Red Herring tells us that a new comScore report will show that MySpace had more page views in November than Yahoo.

What I would like to know is what was the average length of visit for those page views. It’s one thing to throw a lot of crap against a wall, but how much of it is sticking. In other words, which of the two sites does a better job of engaging its visitors?

At first glance, you may think MySpace is the winner. After all, it has more page views, with fewer visitors than Yahoo. But, there’s so much junk on MySpace, I’m curious to learn the average visit length of a MySpace visitor, compared to Yahoo.

Anyone seen the numbers for this?

6 Responses to “Is MySpace Really Larger than Yahoo?”

  1. David Wallace Says:

    My kids spend hours on MySpace. Therefore I can definitely see a scenario where there are less visitors but more page views. Honestly I think it is a waste of time. However they look at each other’s profiles and pictures and spend a lot of time IM’ing while on MySpace.

  2. Marina Garrison Says:

    Hi Andy
    Hitwise has the numbers as follows:
    Myspace Avg Sess Time 30:22
    Yahoo! 360 Avg Sess Time 11:42
    Source: Hitwise US Consumer Generated Media Report Nov06

    Is this what you’re looking for?

  3. Andy Beal Says:

    That’s close. That compares MySpace to Yahoo 360, but not an average across all Yahoo.

    After posting, and reading David’s comment, I expect MySpace to have a higher average “session time”, simply because kids waste so much time on MySpace.

  4. Marina Garrison Says:

    Well I’m sure the uses would say the content is more compelling on MySpace :) Interesting to note that Yahoo is shopping around (albeit unsuccessfully) this must indicate they are at least concerned about their share of social networking traffic.

  5. Chris Winfield Says:

    Does this take into account ‘bot’ page views? I would love to see that breakdown for myspace…

  6. How to Lie with Statistics 2.0: Using Pageviews as a Metric Says:

    [...] Some of the smarter marketers are aware of this, but we need new metrics so journalists and ordinary people stop drawing false conclusions. [...]

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