It’s Not About the Tools

Tools will come and go, but social media is here to stay. In 2008, MySpace had 300 million accounts and in August of that year, it announced a record-breaking 122 million visitors to the site, according to comScore, Inc. But in 2009, traffic had dropped so significantly that it failed to satisfy a minimum traffic level needed for a three-year $900 million advertising deal with Google. Executives at NewsCorp estimated that MySpace lost about $100 million in that deal.

Twitter is a different story. The micro-blogging service boasted 6 million users in 2008. In 2009, it had jumped to 18 million. On March 11, 2011, the day a tsunami hit Japan, Twitter reported 177 million tweets sent. It also reported that on March 12, 2011, users created 572,000 new accounts. In 2008, Twitter had only 8 employees, and by January 2011, it had grown to 350 employees.