We all know this person: constantly showing up in your Facebook news feed with status updates, added friends and wall comments. The “stickiness” of most social sites is unrivaled by any other type of site, a point that the behavior of hardcore members really drive home. These “Social Addicts” check their beloved site constantly and have helped encourage similar behavior from other users.

Knowing how different Facebook and MySpace are in terms of design, functionality and usage, how much do “addicts” of these social networks differ? You may have read some of our posts on BehaviorMatch before, but this analysis essentially highlights the online behavior that is specific to a particular group of users. This analysis is designed to help with media buying, but in the case of social networks it can also help define the psychographic makeup of the group, and how “addicts” generally use their favorite social site.

The table below shows the sites that MySpace and Facebook Addicts* visited substantially more than the average internet user. So what do these users do when they aren’t getting their social network fix?


Facebook vs Myspace Addicts

  • To be fair, the MySpace list is filtered. An untouched list of the top twenty most popular websites among MySpace addicts would consist entirely of sites focused on modifying personal profile pages.
  • After scrubbing out a majority of the sites focused on MySpace layouts, it seems that the hardcore users of this MySpace are still primarily teens, as sites focused on proms (meprom.com), shoes (kicksaholic.com), and Alternative music (warpedtour.com) bubble to the top of the list.
  • It’s no surprise that hardcore Facebook users have a high affinity to some sites supporting Facebook applications, but the applications they interact with the most is telling of their online interests. It appears gaming (socialgn.com), dating (sexappealhq.com), music (garageband.com), and interacting with friends (quizapps.com) are all a core online activity to Facebook addicts.

MySpace and Facebook are two well established sites with massive audiences. Twitter, on the other hand, is a much smaller, growing site devoted to communication. In some ways it could be seen as the direction the social web is heading…and it’s also highly addicting. So what do the sites that Twitter addicts visit say about the future of the web, and how does this compare to the two more traditional social web players?


twitter addicts - where else do they go?

Comparing the three, some really compelling trends are visible. While it’s not shocking that sites like twhirl.org (a site that offers “tweet” enabling software) rise to the top of the list, some of the others show that these users are most interested in socializing.

  • MySpace addicts are somewhat vain – focusing heavily on establishing and fine tuning their online personas by customization of their personal profiles
  • Facebook addicts focus more on engagement – interacting with applications, music and people both on and off the platform
  • Twitter addicts are most interested in fostering communication and exploration – sites that allow a user to understand what their contacts are doing, provide a platform for content discovery and encourage users to actively participate are the most likely places to find hardcore twitterers.

* In this analysis Facebook and MySpace addicts were defined as any user who logged into either site at least 21 days in February. Twitter addicts were defined as anyone who went to their twitter home page at least 10 times in a month. The less stringent qualifications for Twitter addicts was necessary because of the multiple channels used to access the site (mobile, desktop applications).

Share/Save/Bookmark


Analyze more domains: + +

Done reading? subscribe: To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email enter your email address in the box in the right column.

Link to This Post:     


Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.
  1. David Brain

    Great post and analysis

  2. Scranton Web Design

    That is a great use of stats.

  3. Brick Marketing

    We think the only reason why you could possible deem Myspace addicts as “vain” is because Facebook has no way of customizing profiles whatsoever. If Facebook allowed “skins” or “layouts”, I’m sure the same would go for them. Granted the Facebook audience is a bit more about engaging, you couldn’t quite base vanity on that due to the limitations of Facebook profiles.

  4. Chris Applegate

    Hi – great post & really illuminating. Just checking something – in the first diagram a number of “864″ means a user is 864% (i.e. 8.64 times) more likely to visit a site; in the second a number 41,615 means a user is 4,161 times (i.e. 416,150%) more likely to visit a site. Can you confirm that this is this correct, because they’re not consistent scales and it seems to me like that they should be.

  5. Judy

    Great post and analysis…people are hungry for community and these sites fill that need…they will continue to grow.

  6. zrock

    Neat!…comprehensive stats huh? I do have a profile on both facebook and myspace. I use facebook more as I can interact more with friends and there are a lot of interesting apps. I found one called textme from Mozes .This I use for my music networking, I love music and all these make me more of a facebook addict.

  7. mrsleep

    They don’t differ.
    They are all asshat losers looking for a way to feel relevant and self important.

  8. gaeyia

    Hi Max!

    I just (indirectly) referred to this post and after coming back for more, I realized you wrote it. How’s it going? Lots of good info here. Perhaps you have some sort of magic tool that helps define Twitter demographics? Also, something that speaks to the place where the echo chamber meets/influences mass market?

    I guess this just proves what a small world we are in ;)

  9. Mr. Sustainable

    Insightful! I wonder how the viewership numbers would have differed if each site had 99.99% uptime? I know that it would affect my usage!

  10. tybeachence

    sextir.com is a free porn site – We provide the world with free: porn videos,porn movies,xxx free movies,free porn,free sex.
    Best porn hub and tube on the web

  11. bassan

    hi, msj 316 wonderful blog 316 share

  12. Web Site Developers New York

    Great work. Thanks for sharing this informative post.

  13. bassan loadcell

    hi, my name is basan.com.tr BASSAN loadcell.your wonderful blog, 219 blog. tnx. Msj number . 219

  14. merdiven

    Hi, We have been manufacturing stair. 376 merdivenci 376

  15. Alex

    For one, all of them lead to one heck of WASTED time, people spend hours/day on these things! I’m addicted to twitter, replaced myspace/facebook with a nice cestagi profile … i’m done with social time wasting :)

  16. sikiş

    Hello Webmaster Very nice article! Thanks for this!..


Have something to say? Leave a Comment

Get the comments RSS feed, instant notification of new comments

Latest Blog Posts:


Nov 25: Photo Op
Nov 24: 2009 Holiday Shoppers take to The Web
Nov 23: October search term biggest movers are here!
Nov 20: Startup-Watch: A Closer Look at Etsy.com
Nov 19: Visa and the NFL team up for another season
Nov 18: Droid Really Does
Nov 17: October Search Market Share Update: Most gain in volume but only Google gains share
Nov 16: Casinos Need to Continue the Digital Evolution
Nov 13: The Myth of Advertising Decay
Nov 12: What’s More Important to You: Bandwidth or TV?
Nov 11: Who’s ready to bring clicks to bricks?
Nov 10: The “Easy to Read” Secret of Students
Nov 9: Halloween: An Experiment in Retail Blitzing
Nov 6: Dicing into Facebook Ads
Nov 5: “Game Over” for Wii?
Nov 4: Want a Tip about Podcasting? Digital 180 Speaks with Tippingpoint Labs’ Chief Strategy Officer
Nov 3: More Castrol Traffic No Fantasy
Nov 2: Digital 180 Speaks with Espresso’s Managing Director Marta Kagan
Oct 30: Apple Having a Little Fun
Oct 29: HTC Poised to Grow as Smartphone Market Expands