One report had MySpace with 66 million users as of June 2010. Another had MySpace with 110 million people that are monthly active users on MySpace.com including 1 in 4 Americans. While those numbers pale in comparison to Facebook’s nearly 600 million overall members, 110 million is still a huge audience. Two weeks ago more layoffs hit MySpace. Reports are that NewsCorp (think Rupert Murdoch) which owns MySpace is looking to divest itself of the sagging social network – http://on.mash.to/fbxUk1

I don’t have a MySpace profile. In fact the few times I have gone to the MySpace.com home page I have never even gotten anywhere beyond that initial page. Interestingly on the home page there is a prominent banner – ‘Connect with Facebook’. Is it ok if I remark that I don’t quite get that?

In June of 2006 MySpace.com was the most popular social networking site in the United States. By April of 2008 it had fallen to second place behind Facebook based on monthly unique visitors. According to Wikipedia, Quantcast estimates MySpace’s monthly U.S. unique visitors at 43.2 million. It seems to me that a lot of MySpace’s 67 million ‘members’ are not visiting MySpace each month.

One area that seems to be a particular strength for MySpace is music profiles for musicians. Artists can upload their entire discography as MP3’s. There is also a Pandora.com-type function that offers 30 second samples and suggestions on other songs you might listen to, making it a type of music discovery tool.
So where is MySpace headed? We’ve all heard the reports of Facebook’s U.S. $ 50 billion valuation. It’s not news to say that MySpace is even in the same universe. There is an advertising based revenue model which I can tell from ads on the home page (since I go no further), but I cannot tell if it is growing or contracting. I don’t have a very positive perception of MySpace either – for some reason I think of it as a place where young kids are at times preyed upon by low-life dirt bags. But that’s my perception and I am irrelevant to the MySpace folks anyway.

Do you even know anyone who is on MySpace? Or know anyone’s kids that are on MySpace? What do people find cool about it? Why should it survive?