MySpace is Top Ranking Social Media Site When Ranked by Video Streams

As first covered by PaidContent, Nielsen Online reported today that MySpace beat Facebook by about 3:1 in terms of video streams watched, with an average of about 40 minutes per viewer per day. Facebook users on the other hand averaged about 11 minutes a day.

Truth in Numbers: One Month at a Time

The savvy communicator will want to take this with a grain of salt however.  While MySpace leads the way in video streams its time on site is decreasing dramatically.  Twitter exhibits an extraordinary growth rate of 3,712% but has a retention rate of just 40% (which includes the reanalysis of Twitter data to account for non-web clients).

What This Means for Health Care Communicators

While MySpace beat Facebook for video it is not a slam dunk, but rather an intriguing question to run by your agency:

Are our demographics more in line with MySpace or Facebook? Are our customers more likely to want video or the social interaction of shared discussions?

If you’re Ortho Women’s Health & Urology looking to connect with women age 18-24, you’re going to go with MySpace and its first online video game show  “BFF.”  The program – a cute play on the acronym for “best friends forever” – tests how well best friends know each other and is showing good numbers.

If you’re targeting women age 55 and older you’ll want to look at Facebook which reported 142% growth in this age group between February 2009 and April 2009, as Nicole Landguth blogged in Changing Demographics of Facebook.

What To Do?

What should a health care communicator promoting a brand, raising awareness for a disease state or advocating a corporate issue expect when formulating tactics?  One of those frustratingly honest answers.

Question: where should we focus our social media efforts?

Answer: it depends.

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3. Obama, Health Care Reform and Social Media