The Future of MySpace and Social Networking

I am amazed by how popular MySpace has become in a very short period of time. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch posted some very interesting statistics about MySpace on his blog today. In just three years (MySpace was founded in July 2003), they have managed to reach "75 million users (see somewhat dated comparison stats here), 15 million daily unique logins, is growing by a massive 240,000 new users per day, and is generating nearly 30 billion monthly page views (that’s 10,593 page views per second)." (TechCrunch)

MySpace is the second most popular website in the US as measured by page views:

1. Yahoo!
2. MySpace.com
3. MSN-Microsoft
4. Time Warner Network
5. eBay
6. Google
7. Facebook.com
8. Viacom Online
9. Craigslist
10. Comcast

MySpace also leads the pack as the site with the top average page views per day per visitor in the US at 70 page views per day per visitor followed by 61 for Facebook, 56 for craigslist, and 35 for eBay.

Interestingly, MySpace does seem to be more of a US phenomenon than a worldwide one. On Google trends (a highly unscientific measure!), the vast majority of people searching for the term MySpace come from the US with a very small few from the UK, Canada, Australia, and France.

These numbers are amazing when you consider that most of this activity is occurring in one country (the US) and among a fairly young crowd. This young, US audience seems to go online in large numbers when a site appeals to them, and they spend a ton of time on the site viewing many different pages. Young consumers also tend to follow trends, which leads me to wonder about the future of MySpace. Is MySpace simply the latest fad to fade away over time? Or like Google for search engines, has MySpace become the de facto standard for social networking?