YouTube vs. MySpace Engagement
Written by Bryan Donovan (contact - e-mail) -- December 1st, 2006 | Recommend This
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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Get the 
December 1st, 2006 at 11:06 am
Right, but you are not taking in account all the streaming videos that are embedded in everyone’s blogs all over the internet …. there’s a lot that says these two sites are not providing identical services.
Your comparing apples to oranges. If you really want to compare these two sites - you need to also compare the features and services each provides and try to get Compete’s metrics to compare each site on every one of those features - then score it all up and give each an overall score.
Posted on this today at Webmetericsguru.com
December 1st, 2006 at 11:24 am
Nice try Bryan, but Marshall is right. You probably aren’t a huge user MySpace or YouTube. The YouTube embedding/syndication is a HUGE deal, and something all the behavioral-measurement ratings companies need to figure out.
Btw, say high to Don M.
- Cheers
Max Kalehoff
December 1st, 2006 at 2:59 pm
MySpace still the leader for how long user use the service
December 2nd, 2006 at 4:31 am
Perhaps a more balanced comparison would be to JUST compare MySpace VIDEOS against YouTube Videos.
(and perhaps throw in Yahoo Videos)
December 2nd, 2006 at 12:01 pm
I guess I’m not 100% sure how this comparison is relevant… these are two completely different experiences, with people not trying to do the same things at both of these sites. And in fact about a third of Youtube visitors were visiting Myspace just before they came to the Youtube site (according to your pals at comscore)…
December 2nd, 2006 at 3:40 pm
They might be different types of services, but IS interesting to see that people are spending more time on MySpace. Quite expected that most users on MySpace are registered — an obvious (powerful) side effect of the nature of their service.
December 2nd, 2006 at 7:30 pm
Robert,
According to Compete data, the statement you are referring to is way waaaay off:
“And in fact about a third of Youtube visitors were visiting Myspace just before they came to the Youtube site (according to your pals at comscore)… “
Take a look at Compete’s blog post from 11/9: Let MySpace Open the Door
On average, only about 10% of YouTube’s traffic comes from MySpace. Also, volume wise, both sites send about the same number of people to each other. In September 7,205,330 people may have left MySpace for YouTube, but 6,127,909 also left YouTube to visit MySpace.
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:57 pm
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