MySpace Is So Last Year
- By: The Founder [privmsg - website] On 29th Oct 2006 In
Teen Web sensation MySpace became so big so fast, News Corp. spent $580 million last year to buy it. Then Google Inc. struck a $900 million deal, primarily to advertise with it. But now Jackie Birnbaum and her fellow English classmates at Falls Church High School say they're over MySpace.
"I think it's definitely going down -- a lot of my friends have deleted their MySpaces and are more into Facebook now," said Birnbaum, a junior who spends more time on her Facebook profile, where she messages and shares photos with other students in her network.
Founders Note:
I knew this crap was gonna happen... the target market is unstable to say the least.. The Asset allocation to such a 'faddy' site is crazy.... News Corp made money from it from the Google deal.. but it's downhill from here.
Facebook
I've got a facebook profile, since most of the members are from educational areas, and it's been a fair number of years since I've been in school, my profile is somewhat slim. I have however started to get traffic from facebook.
switching costs
i'm not a super-avid myspace user, but i've always found the phenomena interesting. i guess i would tend to structure a given networking site's value proposition (to the user) along the following lines:
1) what functionality does it offer
2) what percentage of people that i'm interested in contacting are using it
to the first point, i'm not real sure what great leaps forward are possible in the near term. which means there's very little meaningful comptetitive differentiation between providers.
to the second point, i think that networking sites are, to use The Founder's apt term, "faddy". isn't a big part of the teenage experience being a bit of a pawn to the zeitzgeist of your peers? if the herd shifts direction, most of the pack is likely to follow. for whatever reasons.
which brings me back to switching costs. myspace is fun, and i enjoy keeping up with friends on it. but if suddenly myspace was no longer "it", i wouldn't lose any sleep. i'd move my ass along to the next site that was "it", and go from there.
without any substantial hooks into their userbase (e.g. financial information), there's very little to stop anyone from moving on to the next, newest, hottest thing.
switching costs!
huge.
Switching costs
They are large, people do invest a lot of time in their profiles. However all this means is that people won't switch networking site allegiances daily, weekly or monthly but doesn't mean that inertia will bind them to one particular site for extended periods (i.e. a couple of years).
Good Call
Now that I think about it, my switch from Friendster to MySpace was really painless. If another "edgy" service comes along (and maybe one that also helps you make a few bucks depending on your popularity), we might see a mass exodus from MySpace.
remember we arent normal!
(arguably) myspace etc are not marketing sites but sites for people to make friends, have a chat, interact. The split is probably about 50:50 genuine users to marketers I guess, but those genuine users are the ones who make it worthwhile to the second half, and they have NO cost of switching, not if all their mates do too....
As soon as something becomes mainstream its not kewl any more. Once your dad confesses he has a myspace profile to market his [insert uncool product here] its definately not the place to hang out online.
But just like nylon tracksuits, Farrah Fawcett hair and Top Trumps, it will come back into fashion - whether its worthwhile hanging around in the wilderness for a couple of social networking generations and whether youll look like someones embarresing dad when they do come back or whether you should just cut your losses and move to the next one is the real question I reckon.
Myspace faded for me before people even knew what it was
I had an account since like 2 years ago, literally. Me and a friend stumbled upon it, and we used it as a tool to find hot girls around the area. We'd search something like "single within 10 miles of our zipe code"... And return like 2 pages max... Now try doing that, you'll return like 60 pages.
After that whole girl venture failed I pretty much quit Myspace... Not to mention the programming is horrible, the site is slower than that fat kid in your high school gym class, and it's full of perverted stalkers now.
Facebook is much more comfortable for people because you can only network with who you know. Then again, if Facebook is opening up more publically, they'll fall into the same hole that Myspace is headed. I mean, that's the only thing that made Facebook worth mentioning and worth wanting an account - it was exclusively for college students.
Alexa traffic numbers
I saw this article the other day and started digging at MySpace's traffic numbers via Alexa. It doesn't look like they'll be fading into oblivion anytime soon. Page Views and Reach both look relatively flat over the last 6 months.
I think there are many webmasters sticking pins in their MySpace VooDoo dolls, myself included, but so far the effect is minimal.
Vox
I reckon they're all crap except Six Aparts wondrous Vox
;0)