Report: MySpace Tops Yahoo in U.S. Page Views

MySpace.com, the uber-popular social networking site, has dethroned Yahoo’s e-mail destination and assumed its former title of the most-visited U.S. website, though the combined network of Yahoo’s various sites still brings in more page views, Reuters reports.

The news comes from a report issued Tuesday by Hitwise, a market research firm, according to Reuters.

Hitwise found that MySpace took 4.46 percent of all U.S. page views during the week ending July 8, edging it past Yahoo Mail for the first time ever and surpassing Google.com, Yahoo.com and Microsoft’s MSN Hotmail e-mail page, Reuters reports.

Yahoo’s most popular pages, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo.com and Yahoo search, combined took upward of 10 percent of all U.S. page views, while MySpace.com and its e-mail page took only 7.3 percent of U.S. website visits, according to Reuters.

Yahoo released a statement in response to Hitwise’s report that reads, “The Yahoo network is made up of many domains and it is not accurate to compare MySpace.com to just Yahoo’s [e-mail portal],” Reuters reports.

Yahoo says it brings in some 129 million unique U.S. visitors per month, which makes up 74 percent of all Web surfers in the world’s largest Internet space, according to Reuters. Yahoo also claims that MySpace takes only 30 percent of the Web audience with its 52 million monthly uniques, Reuters reports.

Hitwise calculates only page views and not the more defined metric, unique visitors, according to Reuters.

It’s also relevant to note that Hitwise’s analysis did not include international Web surfers, of which a vastly greater number visit Yahoo’s site than MySpace’s for the sole reason that Yahoo has been around for much longer and has a larger user base outside the United States.

News Corp. purchased MySpace last year for roughly $580 million, in an effort to bolster its Web presence, Reuters reports.

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.