keeping up

I do a Quote of the Week on my work blog. Here's this week's:

"Myspace has become the new 'home base' for internet users."
{Source: Bill Tancer on Hitwise}

We're told that libraries need to adapt to the new internet environment if they are to survive. It's interesting how rapidly that environment can change. Everyone says it's dominated by Google now, that emulating the Google experience is our goal. But one wonders, will that domination last?

Take, for example, MySpace. How do we respond to its rapidly increasing popularity? As I'm sure you must already know, MySpace is the wild and unruly home to millions (and millions) of (mostly) teenagers. Try a Google search on MySpace and one in Google News to get a sense of its power, even to the extent of provoking blocking attempts in Congress.

About this, John Battelle says: "I've had MySpace again on my mind after talking Weds with Jon Miller, CEO of AOL ... [T]he thing that struck me was how Miller mentioned MySpace in the same breath as Google, AOL, Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon. It had made it into the majors as far as he was concerned, because it owned the social networking space."

So it's no surprise that MySpace has risen to the sixth most popular site -- worldwide -- on the web, as measured by Alexa and that it's the third most popular site in the US (look what sites it outranks):

Alexa top sites in the US:
1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. Myspace
4. Microsoft Network (MSN)
5. EBay
6. Amazon.com

Good thing that among all the other social networking services (Blogs, Chat Rooms, Comedy, Classifieds, Games, Horoscopes, Music Videos, ... ) there's a MySpace Books?