Michael Wolff made a mistake. Or did he ?

John Fine, who writes a column in BusinessWeek called “Fine on Media”, was recently interviewing a biographer named Michael Wolff. The interview piece, I believe, was supposed to be about Rupert Murdoch’s “The Man Who Owns the News”, but I digress. On a side note, I subscribe to Fine’s work - it’s generally good stuff.

During this interview, as some of you I’m sure heard about, he said regarding MySpace users “$*&#) cretins”,  “and if your not a $(*#&% cretin, then you are poor”,  “no one has above an 8th grade education”, and so on. Apparently Fine then said that MySpace, (who was originally built to be a gathering ground for independent music fans) is a great leveraging tool for those that are in a band, or looking to start one. I guess Wolff is more of a Facebook fan.

So I’m going to dig a little deeper into the comparison from a marketing standpoint. Facebook was originally built to be a social network for Harvard Students, who then later expanded outward. They focus on transparency, and realism, by things like having their users maintain their own image, and use a real name.

MySpace does tend to gravitate towards “Hey Mom, look what I can do !” with games like “Let’s see who can make the most annoying flashy page” and “Let’s play a song that shows everyone how dark my world is.” However, does this ruin it for everyone ? Is the customization the primary reason that their user base is being called “*$(&% cretins” ? Perhaps … but then we are actually assuming that they are cretins.

Now, I would like to take a moment to add that I don’t use either social network. Even though I have had a heavy amount of scrutiny over it - especially by calling myself a social media enthustiast. It’s just not for me, and perhaps I will write a blog post explaining it someday. Now here’s facts.

So how do you define a cretin within the tools that the web has given us ? Looking at quantcast data you will see the following regarding MySpace audience profile. (as of Oct 2008)

• 53% of them have no college.
• The majority of them have a household income of 30k-60k a year.
• 53% of them have children. (Is anyone else thinking that it’s strange that this is = to the “no college” stat ?)
• 29% is 12-17 years old
• 44% is 18-34

According to further research MySpace users frequent sites like, onlinepersonals.com, applounge.com, myspacemaster.net, mobwarsapp.com, myhotcomments.com, and zynga.com. Their top searches include “love quotes”, “myspace layouts”, and “free ______ (pretty much everything). So they enjoy finding some single tail true love, playing some games, being cheap finding freebies, and glitter glitter glitter sprucing up their MySpace pages. Now, I’m not going to do the dumb thing and say “The dictionary defines cretin as …”. You make your own call.

Here is Facebook’s lineup.

• 57% have completed college (including grad school)
• 61% of them make at least 60k a year. (most are higher)
• 57% have children (again with the wierd stat, but flipped)
• 32% are 12-17
• 47% are 18-34 years of age

Facebook users tend to shop a lot online; at H&M, Charlotte Ruse, Forever 21, and Urban Outfitters. They visit sites like railsmachina.com, honestybox.com, coolapps.com, mepopular.com, and podzone.org. They frequently search for “spanish translator”, “blockbuster”, “love quotes”, “barack obama”, and “urban dictionary”. So generally - they enjoy being yuppies? shopping, The Notebook Girly Movies, No Habla Espanol can’t speak Spanish, and of course Facebook Apps.

So did Michael Wolff make an uninformed decision ? In this writers opinion, no. His opinion was very informed. His biggest mistake however, was that he made a generalization. To say “All xyz users are _____” is a bad move in ANY situation. Are some MySpace users cretins ? Yeah. Are there more cretins on MySpace than Facebook ? Perhaps.

Just know this. When you are creating your business - keep this overall evaluation in mind. Here it is a few years down the road for both companies. One is being labeled as the creme de la cretin - and is bringing in almost double the revenue as the one that is not being labeled.

The long and short of it is that MySpace knows exactly what their user base is all about, and they are making twice as much money from people who are making half as much per year as Facebook. Did Michael Wolff make a mistake ? Nah. Just a bad reputation move.

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images via Vanity Fair, research via www.quantcast.com