Major US newspapers have a circulation in the neighborhood of 280,000.

The population of Iceland is 280,000 (not counting Bjork, who lives on Mars).

In 2003, Hyundai sold 280,000 cars in Europe.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway (the largest stadium on earth) holds
280,000.

Everyday, 280,000 people use MySpace for the first time.

Dubbed “the ultimate online social-networking mash-up,” this monster of the free-for-all web is looked down upon by most of the “serious” web community. It is admittedly poorly constructed, poorly maintained, and looks unbelievably bad most of the time. Somehow, it has charmed its way into the browsers of millions and millions of people.

Presently, MySpace has 80 million profiles (give or take). That’s well over a quarter of the US population. Their page views have been in the top 5 for the US for the past year.

In their recent article on NewsCorp’s acquisition of MySpace, Wired puts the lumbering giant in some context:
“Back in 2003, half of the VCs in Silicon Valley were chasing the idea that the Web could connect people to one another, rather than to information. It took a couple of Los Angeles hipsters to give that abstraction a serious viral form.”

Last year NewsCorp bought MySpace for $580 million. That means founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe could easily celebrate by buying matching Ferrari 599 GTBs. Current asking price: $280,000.