Facebook Flourishes, Twitter Towers, MySpace melts

Some interesting trends are emerging in the world of social media. News Corp released it’s full year operation income this week, and particularly notable was that the “Other” segment, which accounts for  Fox Interactive Media, reported an operating loss of $363 million. This loss was largely driven by a drop of advertising revenue at MySpace, which FIM owns.

MySpace’s traffic numbers were overtaken by Facebook’s last May and Facebook has gone from strength to strength ever since – it’s now the world’s fourth most popular website, behind only the Google, Microsoft and Yahoo behemoths.  And it looks like even MySpace itself thinks the trend will continue, having recently cut two-thirds of their international staff and replaced their CEO.

But what does this mean? Well, as simply as possible, Facebook is getting it’s audience boost from MySpace refugees, who seem largely to be over 18s who prefer the functionality (particularly the privacy) of the Facebook experience. As well, Facebook is tapping into sections of the market, particularly 35-54 year olds who MySpace weren’t ever able to gain great traction with. MySpace continues to grow in popularity with teens and niche audiences, so it’s not in any danger of going under, but moving forward it won’t be able to compete with Facebook for a mass audience.

Over at Twitter, meanwhile, things continue to go from strength to strength – as this link shows the upward trend is spiking sharply (check international stats here).  But some interesting stats released by Nielsen show that this growth has been driven largely not by the traditional early up-takers, but the over 24s – in fact, remarkably. more people over 55 use Twitter than under 24.

And again, why? Well, it’s just a theory, but I would posit that it’s because Twitter is becoming more than more than just a social media site, in the traditional sense. MySpace and Facebook are about friends. Facebook is about maintaining existing relationships, which is why it is popular all age groups. MySpace focuses as much on meeting new friends as maintaining old relationships, which is why teens and young adults love it so much. But Twitter is more like a virtual town square, where people go to hear the latest news, get advice, find out what has been happening that day, and so on. Which is why it could end up the biggest of them all.

Finding Flickr Fotos Faster, Funner

Everyone’s favourite photo finding resource got a better this week, with a great new search functionality. It’s all explained in this post. No doubt this group of extremely keen University of Washington researchers, who used Flickr images to build Rome in a day would have found it handy.

Don’t Hit Refresh

The whole world is going digital. Later this year work will begin on Mahanakhon, which at 310 metres will be Bangkok’s tallest. But what makes it really noteworthy is that it will be pixelated. German architect Ole Scheeren of OMA, has designed it with indentations in its facade which will give it the appearance of having, or rather missing “pixels”. If all goes according to plan it will be finished in 2012. Incredible.