MySpace, the internet site specialising in social networking, claims to be drawing young people away from television and video games as they use its web pages to make friends and money.
A group of 18- to 24-year-olds drawn from 1,000 people surveyed by Future Laboratory said it would rather spend 15 minutes visiting social networking sites than watching television, reading, playing video games or talking on mobile phones.
The MySpace-commissioned survey also found that women typically spent more time on social networking sites than men, and that the sites were increasingly being used for commercial purposes.
Some 12 per cent of users surveyed wanted to use MySpace to make money.
The survey identified so-called "Culturepreneurs" such as indie filmmaker Omelihu Nwanguma of Inspire Media and T-shirt designer Kesh, who use the website to make money. The first offers production credits in exchange for cash to shoot a film and the latter sells limited-edition T-shirts.
MySpace has lost ground to Facebook in the UK for social networking but is still used as a promotional tool by companies and individuals, such as TV presenters, fashion designers and musicians.
MySpace is the worlds largest online social network, with an estimated 110m active users. It was acquired by News Corp in 2005. But Facebook overtook MySpace in terms of unique users for the first time last year.
No comments:
Post a Comment