Did Back-To-School Students Drive YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook's Traffic Drop?

AdWeek is reporting on a Nielsen/NetRatings study showing a drop in traffic to social network sites this September.:

"Visitors to social network heavyweight MySpace dropped to 47.2 million in September from 49.2 million in August, a 4 percent decline, per Nielsen//NetRatings. The decrease was more striking at YouTube, which Google just agreed to acquire for $1.65 billion [Adweek Online, Oct. 9]. Compared to August, traffic in September fell 19 percent to 27.6 million."

Nielsen/NetRatings attributes this to students returning to classes. However, David Wilson at Social Media Optimization points out that much of MySpace's traffic is well beyond school age:

"If half of MySpace?��Ǩ�Ѣs users are over 35, why would back to school cause
them to spend less time online? They would not. So if the cause is not
back to school then what is it?"

Wilson suggests it could be a sign of a shift to alternative social networking sites like Bebo or Xanga.

Personally, the back-to-school theory seems to make sense to me. Student's online behavior is much more volatile than that of people with regular jobs, a home, etc. And the start of the school year is a perfect time for social network . . . face to face. My guess is we'll see a rebound in traffic to social networking sites as students find their online friends more interesting than many of their new-found classmates.

Tyler, what do you think is motivating admins to block access to sites like MySpace or YouTube? Bandwidth concerns? Student productivity? Other?

I think teachers and admins should let the student on myspace bc we are the future of this world and the college students can get on facebook from their schools but how come we cant get on myspace and stuff?
if u wanna contact me my myspace url is myspace.com/preponfire ur welcome to add me and all that
but back to the subject we should be trusted and they should add stuff on myspace that we can be able to see and where teachers can send us email if we need to know anything important like grades if we are falling or going up
we deserve atleast one chance wut did we do that is so wrong where we cant even get one chance?

Myspace being blocked at school can be a good thing or a bad thing.
It being blocked restricts us to doing our work, but then in our free time we have nothing to do.
There are kids who will go on, who are suppose to be doing their work but they are only wasteing their time and yes, thier marks will drop but thats their on fault.
agreed?

There are proxys to get onto myspace at school, go find one if your that obbsessive, but for the time being we dont need myspace that bad.
Do we?

i agree with you all.I am in the middle of doing a progect on this right now.And it is soo hard to even do the porgect because anything myspace related is blocked.

Im sick and tired of these schools blocking the sites we can and cant get on. I can understand x rated sites, but things like youtube, and Facebook, WHY the heck are we getting blocked. I mean I use youtube for projects. For God sakes, we can't do that any more.

People, we need to do somthing about it. I'm 19 and in high school and they're treating us like 7 year olds. LET US FREE!

i honestly think that we should be able to go on myspace at school if we have free time im 16 years old and see it as a way of communication. i mean were not five and six anymore i think most of us are matrue enough to know what to go on and what not to go on, at school.
think about it we are old enough to know the difference between good and bad sites, and i think that we should get that chance until someone screws it up for us.

I hate this . I only use Facebook can't get it. I can't get a site for my school project to.

haha! looks like everyone is struggling!
datablank.info
this one works for a while
or actasu.info

my Fiancee, my brother, my best friend and my Bro-in-law are all Marines serving in Iraq right now.

and since i work two jobs to take care of me and my daughter on the way, myspace during the day is the only way to talk to them

Comments

1. Posted by: Tyler on November 1, 2006 12:02 PM:

back to school is not driving us off myspace, youtube, and all those websites. The Admin's at the schools are blocking these sites and then students try and try to find a way to get on and then if the succeed then the site that allowed it is blocked as well. so it is not the fact that were back in school it is the fact that we cant get on at school anymore.

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