MySpace mobile usage grows 450% in past year

Social networking giant MySpace reports its mobile usage increased roughly 450 percent in 2008, with users now generating 7 billion mobile page views per month. Speaking here at the Nokia Developer Summit 2009 in Monte Carlo, MySpace vice president and general manager of mobile operations John Faith [1] added that in the last year, MySpace went from less than 10 percent of its mobile traffic originating from mobile applications (vs. the mobile web) to approximately 35 percent--moreover, the company anticipates that sometime within the next few years, 50 percent of all users will access MySpace via mobile.

"We've seen greater user engagement in MySpace mobile applications than we have on the mobile web," Faith said. "Smartphones are creating a culture of expectations among users." In November 2008, MySpace announced [2] its integrated mobile app customized for Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones generated more than 400,000 downloads in its first seven days of release, an all-time high for both MySpace and RIM in terms of first-week downloads.

According to Faith, 32 percent of MySpace's mobile page views derive from users accessing profiles--19 percent originate from users browsing photos, while another 19 percent are devoted to reading messages. By contrast, friend requests make up just 1 percent of mobile views.

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