Subscribe to RSSYouTube vs. MySpace Engagement
MySpace and YouTube are the two top sites where people participating in the web 2.0 revolution have chosen to hang out (literally and figuratively). The amazing growth of these social-networking phenoms was initially driven by consumer-generated content and the communities built up around that content.
The question we wanted to answer: Which site engages people more?
One useful engagement measure we looked at was time spent per session. MySpace has a clear advantage here. In August-October, MySpace visitors averaged 28 minutes per session, while YouTube visitors averaged 12 minutes.
Another measure we looked at was the number and percentage of people actively participating and contributing content (profiles, posts, ratings, video, etc.). This reveals how compelling (or easy) it is to become a member and contribute to the community vs. remaining a more passive and less engaged observer.
Below is a view of both measures averaged over August-October. The bars represent the volume of active members and the diamonds indicate active members as a percentage of total visitors to the respective sites (right axis):
You’ll notice that a whopping 82% of all MySpace visitors conduct member related activities on the site vs. 25% on YouTube.
Bottom-line:
The clear winner, in terms of user engagement is MySpace. MySpace has more visitors, more active members, those people spend more time per session on the site, and a much higher percentage of visitors are “active members”.
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