14 million people can't be wrong

A few months ago I built my Facebook profile, really just to learn about how the social network works. Here's a few things I've learned:

A lot of my friends are also on Facebook. Once I put my profile up and (automatically prompted) joined groups from former employees, schools etc., friends found me and became part of my 'network'.

Compared to MySpace profiles, Facebook profiles are pretty simple. There's not a lot that you can do with the look and feel of the profiles themselves.

There are a lot more applications for Facebook. As a matter of fact this really seems to be the focus of the social network.

So, for those of you familiar with these networks, none of this probably comes as a surprise. What was surprising to me was a recent post on Compete's blog that said 14 million people have used Facebooks applications in August. Take a look at the different ways they've interacted with the site. (if you're old like me, you may have to click on the graphic to enlarge it.)

   

This approach seems to be creating competition for MySpace in this area. As a matter of fact, according to Compete, Facebook is ranked third in terms of page views (an appropriate metric for this type of site) while traffic to MySpace is down by 20%.

Facebook has a long way to go before it comes close to the traffic on MySpace. However, from this data, it appears to gaining steam. - Paul Herring