Why They Are Leaving Myspace
Posted 10/31/2006 09:07:00 AM |
With all this coverage, you might find yourself wondering what exactly is going on with the SNS sites - are the populations aging upwards? Are young people committing SNS suicide en masse? Indeed, while these two questions seem strongly linked, they actually aren't. Let's analyze them separately.
First, with regards to the aging population of SNS, danah and I have conducted analysis that sheds a lot of light on those numbers. In a nutshell - while it is entirely possible that people from all age ranges are visiting SNS, the core user demographic absolutely still skews young. As SNS goes mainstream, of course a growing number of adults will check out the sites to see where their teenagers are hanging out - but these adults are not the users of the site, they are not making friends in the SNS. Unfortunately, a number of media outlets and blogs (The AP, GigaOM) erroneously reported on the data, so the meme that SNS is "graying" is unfortunately and erroneously in the wild.
More interesting, however, is the phenomenon of established users leaving SNS. The WSJ reported on Jenny Thompson, a MySpace native with 4,000 friends who deleted her profile. Indeed, SNS attrition is real, but it is hardly as alarming as the media makes it out to be? Why? Because social circles are fundamentally dynamic. Think back upon your life - how many social circles you've joined or left, the friends you've gained or lost over time. Our social networks are always in-flux, we are constantly joining and leaving social circles. An SNS is simply another one of these social circles - it is bound by the same rules as offline circles, so it is natural that individuals will join and leave.
In this analysis, there is a complicating factor. In the "real world", our social networks are not publicly articulated. When we decide to stop attending our book groups, we do not suddenly dissapear from all of our other social groups. When we delete our Myspace profiles, we do remove ourselves from all of the in-system groups with which we affiliate. Because SNS suicide represents a shunning of all groups, we commonly overattribute value to this action.
Users in an SNS are primarily concerned with how the SNS helps them negotiate the primary contexts in which they wish to articulate their identity. In more human terms, while there are many secondary social networks in the SNS, we are largely concerned with the primary social network that is relevant to our lives. As situational relevance shows, this primary social network changes throughout our lives - and our needs change accordingly. Once a social networking site stops addressing those needs, it becomes less valuable to us, often to the point it becomes a burden. Then we leave.
They key point here is not that the social network sites are changing, but that we are changing. For people in different contexts, social networking sites serve very valuable purporses. The Facebook is invaluable to the young college student struggling to remake their identity and negotiate the world around him or her. Myspace is invaluable to the young relocated professional looking to find friends and dates. (Cliched exampes yes, but also true). However, as we age, our needs change - the college student solidifies his or her group of friends, the young professional settles down. Once the website stops serving our needs, we naturally leave.
The bar or pub provides a good analogy for the SNS. Bars are social places where we interact, meet and display our identity. Bars also have context - think of singles bars, music bars, wine bars. In these bars, there is a natural social evolution. For example, think of a singles bar. The people in the singles bar frequent it at a point in their lives; eventually, they meet a mate and the context becomes less valuable to them. Of course, the singles bar doesn't go out of business - a new crop of singles replaces those old boring hitched folks. This is an important lesson for social networking sites - social places cannot be abstracted from their context, no matter how broad the appeal. Users will leave and move on - however, just like a good bar, they must constantly attract new clientele.
Indeed, the new clientele are coming. Young people are becoming technically socialized on SNS, and SNS serve valuable social needs. However, just as a bar would fail if it tried to be all things to all people, SNS sites must realize their value is dictated by their context. As such, they must consistently be thinking about new ways to bring audience in to this context, rather than just adding new additions designed to trap clientele that wishes to move on. That we wish to move from place to place is entirely natural, and generally technologists fail rather miserably when they try to break human nature for economic reasons.
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8 Comments: (Post a Comment)
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At October 31, 2006 3:06 PM,
said...
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Nice article, I think you are spot on. ITtoolbox is developing a Professional Network for some of the reasons that you've elucidated.
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At October 31, 2006 4:36 PM,
said...
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Great post.
I just love the fact that, after spending some time in MySpace, proper journalists write peices that basically read: "OMMFG! Some1 just killed Kennys MS!!1!"
Your second point is obviously crucial and. . . (third sneak peek into what I hope will be my blog one day)
- a reasearch project in my company I'm not suppose to quote publicly, but which shall be (peer-reviewed) published any time, concludes that "normal" (read: phone) relations have an attrition rate of 10% p. a. (yep, that is huge);
- the rate is clearly not so strong with CMC (Please, could anyone peer-reviewed-publish a figure for me? No time to do it myself.) and even smaller with SNS;
- coming across former friends and alumni is much easier with CMC & search engines;
- relations are therefore far more stable with modern technology, hence a far larger (and long-term criterion homogeneous) address book.
I expect the generation gap will soon be between people who miss the friends whom they lost sight of, and those who had to be rude to loose some friends.
(BTW: ITtool-whatever looks like spam.) -
At October 31, 2006 5:54 PM,
said...
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Actually, it kind of does look like a spammer link. Sorry, but it's a real person, namely me: http://www.ittoolbox.com/profiles/martin_sielaff. As the guy in charge of the development effort for Professional Networking, I was interested to happen upon this blog.
I thought it was well written and interesting, so just wanted to say so. -
At October 31, 2006 9:11 PM,
said...
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Fred Stutzman, you're my hero.
I'm doing this research project on MySpace for a Comm class and your work has been invaluable. -
At October 31, 2006 9:14 PM,
Fred Stutzman said...
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I love being people's heroes! Yay!
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At November 02, 2006 12:41 PM,
christina said...
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Great post, Fred.
As someone who leads an online alumni community for a university, we definitely see different uses of our site as the alum moves through various life stages. One of the items that does seem to appeal to alums of all ages is work and career-related issues. Even after an alum has retired, they are still interested in sharing their work and career experience with younger alums. -
At November 28, 2006 12:36 AM,
Ron Jones said...
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Cool post Fred and a very in-depth analysis.
The way I look at it, every person has got their own reasons behind joining SNS. Some join it merely for making friends (aka socializing), some join it to promote and market their online or offline products or services and some also join it to check out what these SNS really look like.
A person who joins for making friends will continue to be active on SNS as long he gets a good many number of friends from them, after that if he deletes his profile that won't do much harm to him. He already got a big chunk of the cake.
Others who join SNS for marketing their products or services will stay if they get good response from it. If not, Deleted or abandoned !!
I don't know why Jenny Thompson deleted her account but she must have had a pretty good reason for doing it.
I personally don't think that these minor attritions will affect any SNS in any way. Especially MySpace. With 230,000 daily sign-ups, it really doesn't matter how many Jennys come-in or move out. WEB 2.0 is the latest trend on the internet and it will continue to boom unless people go back to WEB 1.0 which is nigh impossible or till WEB 3.0 arrives. -
At December 05, 2006 2:17 AM,
said...
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The interesting statistic is one I don't think we have (or if it is available, please let me know). How many people retain their account on MySpace or wherever, but just start using it a lot less. It's one thing to spend several hours a day in intense networking and quite another to log on a few times a month.
Atre there any statistics that show how the use patterns of an existing account change over time? And how many virtually defunct accounts are still inflating the MySpace "registered user" number?
"Inquiring minds want to know".
-Steve
