As you’ve probably heard, myspace has jumped all the charts to the most popular website in the world this year. More popular than mulletsgalore.com, more popular than michaeljackson.com, and certainly more popular than fredrickville.com. I mean, look at us, we’re a place for five friends.

While I was writing this I was trying to find some definite statistics to back up this claim, and I found that there was surprisingly little evidence to support this claim. At least, little evidence that was consistent.

All reports and blogs agree, myspace is a hit, top of the internet hotspot. Does that annoy you to hear that? Every time I hear it, it makes me kind of shudder. It doesn’t make sense, a site so horribly done, with so many problems, and such a horrible user-interface, how could it get so popular?

Well I did some research to find these interesting tidbits.

1. The number one source I heard used to compare myspace with the world was Hitwise, followed by alexa. What do these two companies have in common? They gather statistics the only way they can: They sit around and watch. That’s it. They don’t have some secret records held by the government logging every click… no, they literally do it the same way you or I would have to do it if we were given the task. Alexa, from what I’ve seen is far less correct than hitwise, but it appears they gather their data simply by using networks of ... spyware... to determine statistics. Want to see your alexa rating? You might be interested to know, that’s your rating based on other users who happen to have the alexa toolbar installed. That’s right, which makes for particularly useless statistics if you ask me. If your site is aimed at a demographic that alexa’s toolbar advertising department isn’t aiming at, your stats could be artificially low. Now Hitwise, this one was a bit tricky. It’s not readily apparent how they get their stats but it’s most likely a combination of back-end deals with search engines, and more shady deals with toolbar companies… Probably a variety of different companies, to lessen the blow of the biased demographic of a single company. Does this mean we’re getting the full scoop? Nope. Does this mean the results are that far from the real scoop? It’s hard to say… they could be exactly to scale of the real data, or they could be horribly off. True, this is how a lot of statistics are taken, sample groups, right? This is like sample groups gone wrong, because we don’t know the demographic of the person using these tool bars, or even if the tool bars give accurate responses (how many toolbars change your homepage? How is that site’s hit count going to benefit from that?) Ok, so we’ve got a +/- a billion here. Great. Turns out, the only people with the true 100% accurate data, are the companies themselves. Stored right in the server logs.

2. We’re counting hits. This does mean the site is busy and... well, attractive enough that people don’t just leave. But it also means that it could artificially make you think it’s got more people using it, when in fact, it usually means quite the opposite. Think of it this way, you direct your browser to myspace. (1 hit) You login and are given a page of ads, which you skip, directly to your profile. (+ 2 hits). You’ve got messages, so you go to your messages page (+1 hit) and read your three new messages (+5 hits check messages and back). Two of the messages were from college-aged girls who “just wanna have sum fun!” They strangely have one picture that is only at thumbnail size, and no friends. Spam right? Spam without a cause…? I mean, this person isn’t selling anything; they’re just sitting there sending mass messages. Weird. (+8 hits to check profiles and back). Now on to your top 8 friends, who each have new messages, and of course you want to leave a little note on each friend and check out their pictures, which conveniently for this example, they each have 2 new pictures. (+72 hits). Now you leave. Close the browser, or click logout and close the browser, (Maybe + 1 hit). Your grand total for a typical stay at myspace? 90 hits. Sound like you? From what I’ve observed from other trendy people I know, this is a bare minimum of what a typical visit to myspace is. It’s fun to check and recheck each profile, see if anyone responded to what you wrote. It’s not fun to follow a conversation across multiple profiles because, oops, can’t comment on my own profile. This should’ve been a show stopper, but instead it was a (+1) hit-maker. I won’t run through this entire exercise with you again for google or the like, except for to tell you an average visit at google I’ve seen consists of about 6-15 hits. I search google probably twice a day. 30 hits max.

What can we gather from all this crazy stuff?
100 users with typical visits to myspace is the same as 300 users with (multiple) typical visits to google. Or more aptly, 1:3.

Are these numbers perfect? Of course not, but you get the idea. If I presented you a question: “Which site is more popular, one with 300 users, or one with 100 users?” Most would answer “the one with 300 users, idiot.” By definition, popular would be “relating to the general public.” 300 people is more of the public than 100, despite how many hits each of those people commit.

So are hits a fair way to compare a site’s rank in the world? Maybe not. Does my fuzzy math make a difference? Probably not. But at least you’ve been informed.

Stumble this article.