14 DAY TRIAL // The battle between the two social networks is now harsher than ever. Before Facebook, MySpace ruled the market in numbers of visitors by far and it didn't look like it would relish that position very soon. Despite the privacy problems that FB encountered with its Beacon program, it now slowly creeps behind the leader of the lot ready to strike the decisive blow.
It's a fact that Zuckerberg's company has seen incredibly rapid growth and the amount of money that it is valued at is a staggering 16 billion dollars, with Microsoft owning a small chunk of that. According to the numbers that comScore.com has provided and Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch.com underlined, MySpace doesn't look like such a good horse to be betting on at the moment, despite their continuous efforts to launch new features, like the music interview and recording session page. Worldwide, it is still the top dog, but Facebook is breathing heavily down its neck and we all know that the Internet is a global game.
The last bastion of MySpace clear dominance, the US, still has it rise over 50 percent ahead of its rival but, as I said above, that basically means it's a stronghold, not the turning battleground in the war between the two. It's the number of visitors worldwide that count, despite what MySpace propaganda might say. It's true that the United States are the best example they could have chosen because there aren't many countries as wealthy and as well equipped to meet the demands of the Internet savvy users.
The balance sheet at the end of 2007 showed Facebook rising in its traffic with about 51 percent while MySpace dropped 8 points. This reminds me about the charts with the numbers of users Yahoo Mail and Gmail have, pretty much similar in percentages and statistics. According to them, if Google's email service keeps adding users at the rate it is doing it now, it will catch up with Yahoo! by 2010. I'm guessing that in the MySpace / Facebook battle, if they keep with the trends, the latter will be well ahead of the former within a couple of months.