Marketing Pilgrim

23,000 users couldn’t be wrong. Or within the margin of error. Nope. comScore is definitely, totally, 100% correct when they report that their May data indicates Facebook has just barely edged out the formerly most popular social network in the US, MySpace—70.278M to 70.255M.

Okay, even if the difference—0.03%—is well within the margin of error, the point stands: Facebook has at least caught up with, if not surpassed, MySpace in the US.

Facebook has long dominated the world in the social networking sphere—just a few months ago, Nielsen pointed out that they’re the most popular social network in almost every country. But until now, MySpace has held on to its lead in the US.

TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld says that the trend isn’t likely to change in the future:

Don’t expect MySpace to reverse this trend and regain its top spot anytime soon. Having just successfully launched its “vanity URLs,” Facebook looks to be on the verge of another hype cycle. Just 15 minutes after the launch, a half million people had signed up for vanity URLs. And as of sometime today, some 6 million users will have apparently signed up — just three days after it launched. Practically everyone is talking about the company once again, from blogs to the mainstream media.

Plus, as you can see from comScore’s graph above, the companies’ momentum are heading in opposite directions. Back in January, Facebook had twice the monthly uniques of MySpace worldwide. In February, we saw evidence that much of Facebook’s growth was coming from “older” users (as opposed to the site’s former typical college-aged users).

What do you think? Is there anything MySpace can do to reverse its fortunes with the media and users?

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