Of all the social revolutions that have taken place over the past hundred years, there have been few as pervasive as that of the Internet. At the dawn of home computing, those who wiled away their evenings and weekends in front of a monitor were generally perceived to be socially backward. Throughout the eighties teen comedies played heavily upon popular stereotypes of dominant 'jocks' and socially doomed nerds, although today that generation would probably tip their baseball caps to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, or Tom Anderson. Within a few short years, social networking sites have metamorphosed from a teenage distraction into a mainstream phenomenon that claims over a billion disciples. From the office to the bedroom, we can now acquire more friends, plan our social life more effectively, and make more informed choices about our leisure activities. Whether you are online seeking a new friend, a date, or a like mind to commune with, you are only ever a few clicks away from your goal. From a financial perspective, such heavy traffic attracts advertisers en masse, and where there is big money Microsoft and Google are never far behind. The excitement of a social networking ‘gold rush’ has attracted a fresh crop of market debutantes, and selecting a suitable network must appear bewildering to the uninitiated. So perhaps it is time to take stock of this rapidly developing market? Who are the major market players, who actually owns them, and what are they really worth? More importantly, which social networks are worth your precious evenings and weekends?
Social networking has also transformed the world of modeling, allowing models to create online profiles which entertain and accommodate their many fans. Such profiles also enable models to announce events and organize their busy schedules. This social revolution has encouraged more models to become independent, as their reliance upon model agencies for exposure and employment is diminished. Some models have passively accumulated over a million online friends for each profile they have published, affording them a dedicated audience for the purposes of advertising their products. In turn, such a vast social reach makes successful models very attractive to corporate sponsors. Natural self-publicists and inherently alluring, models have formed an especially gainful symbiosis with the giants of online networking.
With so many competitors at large, we decided to approach over 2,400 models and media specialists with a questionnaire seeking their views on the respective strengths and weaknesses of the leading market competitors. First we asked which of the following social networking sites they were currently using. We found that although some 47% of respondents currently had an active Facebook account, over 99% maintained a MySpace page. Current usage rates for four of the other major social networks varied between 5% (Hi5) and 11% (Bebo & AFF). Although the respondents had previously used many of the other services, our statistics revealed which services were actively retained.
Many users currently employ two or more social networking services, suggesting that people within the model and media industries tend to cast a wide social net. This however doesn’t address which networking sites are currently the most popular amongst those who use more than one service, and so we asked which site they used most frequently. The surprising and overwhelming answer was MySpace with 79% of respondents - only 21% suggested that Facebook was their preferred service. None of our respondents suggested that Bebo, Hi5, AFF, or Friendster was their primary networking service.
As these social networks all offer an impressive array of services and vast user networks, we attempted to break down which one was strongest for each aspect of online networking. Given their scale, finding your way around one of these sites may appear daunting to a new arrival on the scene, and so we asked our users which one they felt is the easiest to navigate. The overwhelming response was that MySpace was the simplest to navigate, with Facebook and Hi5 coming a distant second and third. Ease of navigation is a crucial consideration for complex social networks, and this explains why MySpace has continued to thrive in the face of strong competition.
Social networks are ultimately judged by how readily their members can network and make new friends. So we asked which site makes it the easiest to meet and contact new people. In this fundamental aspect of social networking, MySpace again came ahead of Facebook (which has a stronger emphasis upon individual privacy), leaving Hi5 and AFF in their wake. Naturally profile accessibility is a matter for company direction as well as personal settings, as many users prefer not to be inundated by mail and friend requests from outside of their inner circle. Although MySpace has many safeguards concerning the privacy of individual profiles, Facebook has turned social networking into an art form, introducing novel concepts such as nudging and poking into the popular lexicon. However, if you want to get connected in a new city within a short space of time, then MySpace is definitely the place to be.
Another central consideration is the quality of the messaging service which is, after all, the mechanism by which individuals can personally interact. Again, MySpace came out on top, with 68% of respondents indicating that it offered the best messaging service, although Facebook (26%) and Bebo (6%) certainly have their admirers. To a degree, the perceived quality of the messaging service will include such factors as ease of use, simplicity, and how readily messages can be picked up and relayed.
Other considerations include the reliability of the service - an important issue if your plans for Friday night are disrupted by a server overload or a profile malfunction. In this category MySpace again fared best, gaining the approval of 68% of respondents, while only 21% favored Facebook, 6% Bebo, and 5% AFF. Another popular feature of social networking sites is their file-sharing function, through which members may exchange images, music, or other paraphernalia. Within this category Facebook proved most popular with 47% of the votes cast, while MySpace came second with 42%, and Bebo third with 11%. There are of course other important issues to consider, such as the number of spam postings or the 'integrity' of acquired contacts. For instance, many users rarely visit their profiles or employ their pages solely as a form of free advertising, and such individuals rarely respond to their communications (or pay someone else to do so). On the other side of the social spectrum, there are those who ask to become a contact and then inundate their list of friends with thinly veiled advertisements. Such concerns are addressed to a limited extent under the question of 'network quality'.
In conclusion, MySpace remains the most popular social network among models, gathering the highest praise for its functionality, network quality, reliability, navigation, and confidentiality. It is perhaps interesting to note that Facebook and MySpace were relatively late entrants to the social networking market, giving them the shortest period for investment & development. This has however not prevented them from dominating the market in terms of the size and popularity of their networks, proving that it may sometimes be an advantage to be second to market. Given the speed with which good ideas propagate through social networks in the Internet era, it may be better to get the blend and balance of a product right rather than to launch a flawed service at a highly discriminating and competitive market. MySpace have clearly taken on board the good ideas of the industry pioneers and avoided many of their mistakes...