programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
As of August 9th, 2006, MySpace has 100 million members. For reference, the population of California is approximately 36 million, and the population of the United States is approximately 300 million.
I have a hard time believing that 1 in 3 Americans could conceivably be MySpace users.
I'm not the only person to be skeptical of these inflated "member" numbers. Robert Scoble recently took issue with the claim that Windows Live Spaces is the largest blogging service on the planet. He did a little ad-hoc investigation of Windows Live Spaces. Most of the member pages he visited were virtual ghost towns.
Dare Obasanjo addresses this criticism head-on:
The number of spaces on Windows Live Spaces isn't a particularly interesting metric to me nor is it to anyone I know who works on the product. We are more interested in the number of people who actually use our service and get value added to their lives by being able to share, discuss and communicate with their friends, families and total strangers.
Kudos to Dare for cutting to the heart of this debate. Who cares how many users signed up for your free service? How many users actually use it?
To illustrate the absurdity of user counts as a metric, Dare cited the LiveJournal stats page. According to that page, LiveJournal has approximately 11 million accounts. However:
If the LiveJournal statistics are representative of other social networking websites, then we should immediately divide the total number of "users", "spaces", or "accounts", by five. Maybe even by ten! That's a realistic estimate of how many people are actually using the service.
Total number of LiveJournal accounts:
11 million
Total number of active LiveJournal accounts:
1.5 million
And that's still an optimistic estimate, because it doesn't factor in multiple accounts established by the same person.
Now if only MySpace and Windows Live Spaces would be as forthcoming about the actual usage of their service, instead of bandying around meaningless user counts.
I think he's just using it as something to create a conceivable number of people. "100 million people" is hard to imagine. "The equivilent to 1 in 3 Americans...thats EVERY third American you meet." is a little easier to comprehend.
[ICR] on August 23, 2006 2:02 AM"1 in 3 Americans could conceivably be MySpace users."
I didn't realise MySpace was restricted to just Americans, or were the other 6 billion inhabitants of the planet just overlooked? ;)
Ross on August 23, 2006 2:14 AMFirst the Coding Horror stickers and now this?
nonDev on August 23, 2006 2:34 AMHow typical that an American thinks only of America; 100 million people and they all have to be Americans? Well of course, who else is there?
J on August 23, 2006 2:39 AMHoly bananas! My country, your country...who cares. Jeff's not focusing on nationalism here. I am sooooo sick and tired of political correctness - who's offending who and why and how, etc. Take it for what it is. It was just an example. It wasn't an attack on anyone's nationality or an attempt to show that Americans believe that the U.S. is the center of the universe (which, of course, it is...narf!)
Ken on August 23, 2006 3:00 AMWell Germany has 80 Million inhabitants.
So that means, that every German has an account. And 20 million Germans must actually have TWO accounts. WOW
Daniel Lehmann on August 23, 2006 3:04 AMI'm glad you brought this up. I have always wondered about those numbers they've published. It's not unusual for a single user to have multiple accounts (I, for one, am guilty of this), and I was always curious to know if they had actually factored that in their statistics.
Thanks.
XINERGY
XINERGY on August 23, 2006 3:12 AMI think he's just using it as something to create a conceivable number of people.
Exactly. Are all the inhabitants of Wyoming annoyed because I picked California? It's just an arbitrary comparison to get an idea of how many "users" we're really talking about.
Also, if the LiveJournal stats are representative, 66% of the users are in the US, and 33% are outside the US.
Jeff Atwood on August 23, 2006 3:15 AM"I have a hard time believing that 1 in 3 Americans could conceivably be MySpace users."
Okay, Jeff phrased this badly and I was pretty shocked at his provincialism too. But let's not get hung up on this. Let's borrow Jeff's methodology and use the LiveJournal stats page as our guide. About 1 in 4 (3m out of 11m) LiveJournal accounts are from the US. If MySpace is the same, then there are 25m American MySpace accounts. Do we have a hard time believing that 1 in 12 (about 8%) Americans could be MySpace users? That about 3% of Britons could be MySpace users? And that 1% of Americans or 0.3% of Britons are active users?
Those numbers still seem pretty high to me, but not as outrageous as the numbers Jeff headlined. And as Jeff says, without actual usage figures from MySpace or Windows Live Spaces, this is all speculation anyway.
Ivan Towlson on August 23, 2006 3:32 AM"If the LiveJournal stats are representative, 66% of the users are in the US, and 33% are outside the US."
Are you sure about this? At the moment, the LiveJournal stats page is saying 10.96m total users, 3.06m in the US. That's about 28% in the US, therefore presumably 72% outside. That includes all the inactive accounts, of course; I didn't see any "active accounts only" figures.
Ivan Towlson on August 23, 2006 3:37 AMHmm, I think you need to reconsider your readership - we're not all American y'know; indeed the US of A isn't actually the centre of the universe dude.
rg on August 23, 2006 4:10 AMIf you consider that the estimated number of actual internet users is somewhere between 700 and 1,100 million people it means that somewhere between 9% to 14% of all internet users are using MySpace. That does seem rather high to me.
daen on August 23, 2006 5:24 AM????.... How's possible that if you can't believe that 1 of 3 americans use myspace, then you REALLY THINK the world is flat and empty beyond US borders?... Do you really believe that europe, america, asia, africa and australia are disney inventions for your entertaiment?. Let me explain you something:
1) There's is people that is not blonde
2) The habitants of europe no longer live in caves.
3) Electricity is already in place in asia.
4) Dudes from latin america can already read
So maybe, next time you want to write a post that reduce the number of world habitants to 5% you may want to check what's exists out there beyond your terrorist governent, mc donalds fat children and blonde disfunctional families.....
estebanf on August 23, 2006 7:11 AMindeed the US of A isn't actually the centre of the universe dude.
It's not? *grumble* time to go rewrite the science books...
If Jeff lived in Canada, he would have used Canada as the basis for comparison. Or if he had lived in Australia, then he would have used Australia.
I think some people have a bad case of USA envy. :evil
Eric D. Burdo on August 23, 2006 7:13 AMJeff, this is slightly OT, but none of the images in your posts are showing up in my RSS reader--I get scaled "wtf" images instead. I assume you're referrer-checking and the RSS isn't on the approved list.
Eric on August 23, 2006 7:16 AMI don't have a myspace account, but I would say that about 1 out of 3 of my friends does. I realize that is not an accurate cross section of the country though, as I'm pretty sure maybe 1 out of 10 of the people I work with may have one. But I think you are missing an important point. Myspace also has bands and movies and events as "users" so you are right. Since many myspace users are not actual people, and people may have multiple accounts, that number is inflated. But you can't really compare it to livejournal, a lot of people just start accounts there to post a comment. I'm sure myspace's user to usage ratio is much higher. Facebook may be a more interesting statistic since you can only have as many accounts as you have valid university email addresses (typically 1).
mallio on August 23, 2006 7:58 AMUSA! USA! USA!!!!
Sheesh people he's just trying to make a point.
How about this: there are estimated about 1 billion people with net access ( a href="http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm"http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm/a ). Are we really supposed to believe 1 in 10 of all netizens have a MySpace page?
Damien on August 23, 2006 7:59 AMICR, Jeff, Eric,
Quit rephrasing please. It's not exactly like that. If I would analyze some published demographic number, say... people who smoke pipe in my country (roughly 22 million inhabitants) and this number would be 0.1 mil., I wouldn't try to compare that to the inhabitants in my town, to "get a view". Knowing that my town has roughly 0.8 mil. inhabitants, the number would seem absurd (one in every eight). But that would be because I've made a stupid and irrelevant comparison... It would also point some tendency to see my town as the only relevant town in the country. That would say something about me. Now if you take this analogy and decompose it back to the original context...
Ha ha .. so Jeff goofed up. We all do. Some of just choose to be a man and admit it. The humour (please note the spelling) is in the fact that he chooses to be silent about this faux pas.
On the article though ... if we are mentally to divide such numbers by 10 , then we ought to divide all such reported numbers. I guess that the point myspace wants to make is that they are the biggest out there.
Puneet on August 23, 2006 8:08 AMJeff,
When you wrote this article, did you think that most people reading your site would ream you over just one little sentence?
Jeff:
You're omitting one of the most important reasons to doubt those stats -- bots.
Either that, or there are hundreds of drop-dead gorgeous "women" on MySpace who want to be my "friend".
And similar to the person/user ratio not being 1:1, there are plenty of MySpace groups, bands, communities, etc.
Joe Grossberg on August 23, 2006 8:30 AMdaen:
If you consider that the estimated number of
actual internet users is somewhere between 700
and 1,100 million people it means that somewhere
between 9% to 14% of all internet users are using
MySpace. That does seem rather high to me.
Make that "have used long enough to create an account", and I suspect that'll include all of Hotmail and anyone who created a passport (even if on another domain... like my two). Then it starts to become more reasonable.
Eric D. Burdo:
It's not? *grumble* time to go rewrite the science books...
Those'll be the ones about creationism? :-)
(runs away quickly)
Richard not in the US, but working for a US multinational.
Richard on August 23, 2006 8:34 AMI think some people have a bad case of USA envy. :evil
Not envy, pity
rg on August 23, 2006 8:37 AMI think some people have a bad case of USA envy. :evil
Not envy, pity
...or maybe hatred...
Well, Regardless of the people in the world, his point was that... well, "Total users does not equal total usage".
On a side note... I'm suprised those servers can manage to hold 100M users.... Lol. **pukes a the .cfm extension**
Justin on August 23, 2006 9:58 AMJust because we have morons running the country please don't take it out on Jeff.
Or at least thank him as agressively as you bash him when he writes something you like.
One in 5 people in the world are chinese.
That means someone in my family is chinese.
There's John, Pete, Chang and Sissy and Me.
I think its John.
;p
neo on August 23, 2006 10:33 AMIt struck me the same way, too -- that Jeff was limiting that number to Americans. I'm guessing he'll be a little more careful in his analogies next time.
In any event, I had always wondered the same thing about AOL user counts as reported by AOL back in the 90s. Did anyone ever look into that? The numbers were so improbably high that I thought they were reporting screen name counts vs. the number of paying accounts.
Michael A. Vickers on August 23, 2006 10:55 AMJustin, MySpace was ported to the .Net Framework. They are using BlueDragon.NET
Scott on August 23, 2006 11:56 AMreminds me of a simpsons quote:
"You, sir, are worse than Hitler." - Selma and patty's boss at the DMV on the Simpsons when she thought Homer smoked two cigs at once.
you guys should lighten up, jeff just used amarica as an example. And if he thinks Amarica is the center of the universe is that so bad? Dont you guys generelize the same way, when you say "It is so typical Americans to think they are the world" ?
I can understand to some extend why usa are not very popular at the momemt, but this "popularity" on hating amaricans are stupid.
The northpole are probably the only country that Jeff could have used that would not piss off some internet users, but hey Northpole would not be able to populate MySpace, and I guess that is Jeff's point with the post.
some serious haters up in here... Jeff is only human
retrospect on August 23, 2006 12:42 PMThe fact that myspace has 100 millions users doesn't mean that 1 out of 3 americans have an account. There are A LOT of non american myspace users. Me included.
franco on August 23, 2006 1:39 PMI am shocked that even Jeff Atwood thinks that USA == World.
marty on August 23, 2006 1:43 PMGee Whiz - cant you just read it for what it is? Is it really necessary to critique this guy? Perhaps, just read it and close it. Does anyone care what you folks really think? Nope!
Bob0 on August 24, 2006 2:10 AMI don't think I've ever seen such worthless comments for a blog post. My god, it's bad enough that ONE person would point out that the US != World, but when 15+ people do it...ugh.
namehere on August 24, 2006 2:38 AMActually namehere, that was only pointed out 13 times, which is equivalent to 108% of non-american internet users (one of them posted twice).
Dave on August 24, 2006 5:53 AMI don't think for a minute anyone seriously called Jeff up on his "1/3 Americans" remark because they hate america.
And with respect, "I have a hard time believing that 1 in 3 Americans could conceivably be MySpace users" makes no suggestion of equivalence or comparison.
I think its an honest mistake, but its fair to raise it, less any vitriol.
Doug on August 24, 2006 1:55 PMJesus, Tough crowd here eh?
Comedy Night at coding horror...
JA: "So a priest a rabbi walk into a bar..."
Readers: "OMG OMG OMG OMG, Jeff Atwood just said that there are only 2 religions in the world. Does he really think that $religion doesn't exist. He probably thinks that $religionists still live in Caves without electricity, what a total moron!!!"
Seriously guys, often times people use comparisons to help explain the vastness of numbers. e.g. there are 5 million people in Ireland, so when someone tells me that L.A has 7 million people, it helps me realise how big that is when I work out that the entire population of my country could fit in L.A. and still have space for more.
Anyways, I must go back to work in another town that wasn't mentioned in this blogpost, therefore non-existant.
Good post Jeff.
Des
Des Traynor on August 25, 2006 9:32 AM
The MSM have been caught with very inflated circulation numbers so it is not surprising to find other sites doing similar things, expecially if they tilt left
Evan
Evan on August 29, 2006 9:27 AMWell, the US is more or less the only country it would make sense comparing the usage numbers to. Using Norway or the UK wouldn't make sense, since there aren't 100 mill inhabitants in either country. Using China would be wierd, as the number would then seem small + we all know that China doesn't have the same Internet penetration.
You COULD use the EU, but then again, how many Americans know the EU has 500 million inhabitants?
TheReader on January 23, 2007 1:43 AMseriously man, I need to point out that the USA is not the entire world ! (jk)
cp27 on November 6, 2007 4:19 AMPoor Jeff. Gotta agree with jd on this. If you say "100 million people out of 300 million" it's insane. If you say "100 million people out of 3 billion", less insane.
deworde on November 7, 2007 1:25 AMLet's just agree to disagree. But at the very least, we can ALL agree that Jeff is a moron.
Jeff_is_SLOW on February 15, 2008 6:55 AMHey! I do not appreciate that. Yes, I occasionally let loose and crap my pants. And yes, I get cofused at why all Chinese people always smell... but I am not a mormon...
Jeff Atwood on February 15, 2008 7:04 AMAs a piece of human feces, NOTHING offends me. Well, maybe the Chinese. Hell, even I think they are dirty...
If my comment makes no sense, then maybe it should become a mormon belief.
Crap In Pants on February 15, 2008 7:10 AMAs Chinese, all is fine. Happy bang wow. Fecal power! Yeah!
China on February 15, 2008 7:12 AMI always use myspace.day and night 7 days a week 10 hours a day and 365 days a year.Myspace is not a joke to me , I take it very seriosly because i know Tom took the time out to make this website and the least i could do is use it and i do and i thank Tom so much. He is very inteligent when he made Myspace,It keeps me busy with the games,messages,music,comments and much much more. I would like to thank Tom for all his hard work. I bet Tom is very succsecful in what he does and he deserves to have everything he wants because he let everyone else have what they want by interacting with our friends and family as well.So i would like to thank Tom soooo much for all his work and i am sitting home right now giving tom a standing ovatoin because he deserves it very very much. THAK YOU TOM FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK AND TIME.
HEY KAYLA on June 20, 2009 11:02 AMSeeing as how MySpace banks on the bizarre social phenomenon of perceived popularity leading to actual popularity (and to their credit, it works for them), I guess it makes sense for them to inflate their numbers. People use MySpace because "everyone else is on it" or "you have no idea how often I'll be talking to some girl and she'll ask me 'are you on MySpace?'" (actual quotes from users).
In a sense, it's annoying that these services only bother to advertise themselves as *popular* and not *good* or *useful*, but then again, isn't popularity the most important metric of a social-networking service, and doesn't it make sense for competing companies to inflate their numbers as much as possible?
About the America thing - Jeff did say "conceivably", so I don't know if it was a goof, but I still think that's wrong. The vast majority of MySpace pages appear to have been designed by blind, retarded monkeys, who ipso facto are not citizens of any particular country.
Aaron G on February 6, 2010 9:51 PMHar har!
Fight fire with fire hey? One set of shonky figures to discredit another set. I'm glad you got drilled for that. It really does seem that Americans think they are the world and you're calculations don't help.
I think he's just using it as something to create a conceivable number of people.
That doesn't work either, because I doubt you can conceive the whole population of USA. And looking at 1/3 of the people you meet in America as those that are supposed to be myspace members is a flawed idea aswell, since the original calculation is flawed. You just look real stupid trying to make that statement, even if your point is valid.
Nelson on February 6, 2010 9:51 PMAs a mormon, I am greatly offended by Jeff, the Chinese, and good common sense. Crapping your pants is fine with me. Although it tends to offend other people.
Mormon Joe on February 6, 2010 9:51 PMThe comments to this entry are closed.
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