Murdoch Biographer Disses MySpace

If you thought Randall Stross’ attack on Tesla yesterday was in poor taste, wait until you read what [Rupert Murdoch biographer] Michael Wolff has to say about MySpace. In a dinner interview with BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine, Wolff says:

…if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.

That’s just part of a much longer interview in which Wolff goes into detail on exactly why he thinks MySpace will go the way of AOL. He also makes some blatantly incorrect statements, such as “All of the growth now in MySpace is international,” which is incorrect. In the last year MySpace has grown about 10% in the U.S., adding 7.5 million monthly unique users to a total of 76.4 million. Non-U.S. users have grown from 45 million to 54 million, a 17% increase. (source: Comscore)

And those comments about MySpace users being poor and uneducated aren’t entirely correct either. Of MySpace’s U.S. users, 52% make more than $60,000 per year, which is far from poor. 23% make more than $100,000 per year. Just 11.6% make less than $25k/year.

Facebook’s numbers are 65% and 33%, respectively, which is more impressive. But MySpace has 30 million more U.S. users than Facebook (76 million v. 46 million), so MySpace’s aggregate numbers are higher. 17.6 million U.S. MySpace users make more than $100,000 per year.

Also true of MySpace users, according to Nielsen: 63% own homes, 86% are registered voters and 28% are college graduates. Facebook has similar numbers.

And a whole lot of people smart enough to work a Blackberry device seem to like MySpace, too.

See the graph below for more details.

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Comments

[Buffett Jr:]

I don't know something about myspace seems so chumpy. I think they will go the way of AOL.

2008 Dec 02 12:17 PM

[KevinH:]

Although he got some of his research facts wrong, I have to agree with him that MySpace is currently a social wasteland with a population of zombies and predators. The one exception to this generalization is the music crowd. MySpace remains a platform for new and emerging artists to connect with their fans ... however there are more evolved platforms today that are better in a lot of respects.

Whatever wrongs there in Stross' article, he does have some good insights.

2008 Dec 02 12:24 PM