MySpace, Jealous Of Attention Lavished On Facebook, To Launch PR Push

It was bound to happen. All that attention lavished on Facebook, some of it warranted, some not. It eventually got under MySpace’s skin.

So the agitated crown keeper has decided to launch a PR offensive to combat what it clearly feels is ostentatious favoritism in the journalism space and especially among notable bloggerati for its less-ugly-but-still-not-purty foe. And in a way, the frustration is understandable. How dare Facebook fans and the folks that cover them in the “presses” write MySpace off as dead. How dare they declare that MySpace is losing its lifeblood (members).

Personally, I really could’ve give two [expletive] whether Murdoch’s social network busts or not. I’m not fond of it, I never was, and to be frank, I really do wish its days are limited. Very limited. But, alas, according to the numbers, that ain’t gonna happen, at least for quite a while yet. And MySpace wants to get that message across in the days and weeks and months to come (yes, probably years to come as well) as clearly as possible.

They’ll do so simply by laying “the numbers” out for all to see.

Very current figures, tallied by UBS Research and Comscore, show Facebook as needing quite a bit more in the way of members and visitors to even have a chance at supplanting MySpace and taking the #1 spot. A table, published on the GigaOM blog, shows that in May of 2007 MySpace saw 98.9 million “unique visitors”, while Facebook claimed 26.6 million. In June, each saw 70.5 million and 27.9 million, respectively. For MySpace, that’s a gain of 1.6 million over the course of a month. For Facebook, 1.3 million. When individual page views were recorded, MySpace showed a gain of 2 billion over the same period of time, while Facebook actually showed a decrease of about 1.1 billion.

That tells me MySpace is still very much in it’s prime. (A sad truth, no doubt.)

Now, this isn’t to say that MySpace has nothing to worry about. Facebook is definitely a worthy contender, though one that I happen to believe is expanding into too many directions far too quickly for its own good (long-term). Much time will pass before #2 has the chance of nipping at #1’s coattails – at least numbers-wise.

For the moment, I’ll just say this: It won’t suit Murdoch to whine too much about all the headlines Facebook is generating. Facebook is young, it’s open; there are a lot of things going on in there. Which is why a lot of items about those things are being churned out with increased regularity. Apparently there’s news there, and the news is being delivered.

The same cannot be said about MySpace. If MySpace wants equal exposure, it’s going to have to do something to warrant such treatment. Publishing tables stuffed with numbers will only go so far for so long.

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