

MySpace, R.I.P. - krtl
http://gigaom.com/2010/02/10/myspace-r-i-p/

======
philk
_The web doesn’t hold much attraction for Rupert Murdoch who is now enamored
with e-readers and tablets.

Tablets, according to those in the know, are being viewed as saviors for News
Corp.’s core business: news and information. He thinks that since devices are
not that useful without his content; he eventually wins because he will get
people to win. “Content is not just king, it is the emperor of all things
electronic!” he recently said._

I think he's missing the point here.

a) Newscorp has flourished as a business because up until recently media has
been an industry with a high barrier to entry. To paraphrase Warren Buffett,
if you own the only newspaper in town it's a bit like owning a local monopoly.
The same applies for television channels, etc. which have high upfront costs.

b) The problem facing Newscorp now is that the internet has lowered the
barrier to entry dramatically, so that its size and financial clout is no
longer a major advantage. For instance, would you rather read an article in a
Newscorp paper or one of PGs essays? In the past it'd be hard for PG to get
his essays out there, now it's much easier. This means a much higher level of
competition, and competition destroys margins.

c) e-Readers/Tablets don't make the barrier to entry much higher. (You can
publish stuff on the Kindle for free, for instance:
<https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin>). Hence it's hard to see how he can compete
in the tablet/e-Reader space any better than he could compete online.

~~~
hacknews
"This means a much higher level of competition, and competition destroys
margins."

This has wider implications on the ability to profit over the long run in a
capitalist society. In open markets margins should tend to zero. It seems the
only way to profit would be to have some edge in terms protected market
(monopoly) or slight protected technical advantage for a short period. But
once the protected advantages are gone margins should tend to zero. Therefore,
this isn't just a problem of old media but of all markets.

~~~
crc32
I am not sure that "margins tending to zero" applies at all to any market
where the marginal cost of producing is non-zero.

~~~
mseebach
Yeah it does. The margin that tends to zero is the profit margin, not the
marginal cost of production. That's why the commodities business is so tough:
If you make $10 profit pr. ton of CommodityFoo, someone's gonna come along and
underbid you $5, unless you bring some value to the game that the new guy
can't.

And that's exactly what's happened to the news business: The internet ate the
newspapers USP, classifieds, and effectively turned them into commodities.
Take away the classifieds and the agency-dispatches, and the rest barely fills
an interesting blog.

~~~
crc32
"unless you bring some value to the game that the new guy can't." yes, like
the supply of a scarce resource. This little get out clause renders your
argument meaningless.

If there are only 100 tons of gold available per week, (the marginal cost of
producing the 101st item is infinite, i.e. non-zero) it does not matter how
many competitors there are in the market. If demand is for more than 100 tons,
profit margins will not "tend to zero". This scenario illustrates that even in
a commodities market a situation may arise where a large number of competitors
will not cause margins to tend to zero.

Let alone situations where branding is involved etc. - all factors that we can
assume are permissable under the stated condition of an "open market", and all
in the category of "some value to the game that the new guy can't". So in
other words your comment amounts to "yes it does, except where it doesn't"

~~~
mseebach
You're confusing profit from speculation and profit from value added sales.

 _Especially_ in the gold-market, profits come from speculation, not value
added sales.

~~~
crc32
No, I contend that it is you who is confused. There is only one type of
profit, and I am correct that profit may be derived from demand exceeding
supply irrespective of the number of suppliers. This has nothing to do with
speculation, it is a basic concept of market economics that holds true in an
"open market" as defined by the original commenter.

------
JacobAldridge
I don't have quick access to user numbers, but Google search trends is
interesting (especially when you consider the readwriteweb example today of
people typing 'facebook login' into google).

Here's the comparison of Facebook, Myspace, and Orkut -
[http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+myspace%2C+orkut&...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+myspace%2C+orkut&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1)

Nothing surprising, except that there are some areas (USA? Tijuana??) where
Myspace still out searches Facebook.

------
rmanocha
It's hard for me to understand why people still use MySpace. I've never had an
account there, but from all the user profile pages (not sure if that's what
they're called) I've visited, none have been easy on the eye. Facebook seems
to be the much better option to me. The Facebook fan pages can be used by most
bands to build their brand and market themselves (I've only ever seen Bands
using MySpace - nobody I know uses it) - maybe they should create some way for
people to migrate their MySpace accounts to Facebook - that'll probably speed
up MySpace's demise.

~~~
bartl
Myspace is good as a home page for musicians, due to the high availability of
bandwidth for sample tracks. Virtually every musical artist who is anything at
all, has a home page there.

Facebook is a poor replacement as _you must be logged in to be able to see a
Facebook page_.

I don't like being spied on, so I don't have a Facebook account, and never
will.

As a pure social networking site for ordinary people, MySpace's days are long
over.

~~~
billpg
You don't need to be logged in to see a fan page.

------
mambodog
I think Myspace still has the band/musician space, largely because what
Myspace allows and Facebook doesn't (restyling the page, embedded music
player) are pretty necessary to artists asserting their brand identity. Which
is really the main reason for them to have a presence.

~~~
dan_the_welder
Take a look at Bandcamp, it's the last nail in MySpace's coffin.

Main page, <http://www.bandcamp.com/>

Random couple of artist pages for an indication of the customization
available, never mind the billing and music serving back end.

<http://redfang.bandcamp.com/> <http://danielaspector.bandcamp.com/>

~~~
ahlatimer
The problem I see with Bandcamp is that there's no discovery portion of it. If
you already know of an artist, it's great, but you can't stumble across some
new artist like you can on MySpace.

~~~
dan_the_welder
Not to be sarcastic, but there is the whole internet full of tools to point
people at your Bandcamp or MySpace page, in fact that's what people are doing
for their MySpace music pages, promoting them on Facebook and in some cases
writing their address on bathroom walls.

Also, there is something to be said for doing a single thing and doing it
well. Managed hosting of musicians websites and nothing else.

If anything this is the year of overshoot, Google wants to be Facebook,
Facebook wants to be Twitter (still), the Sixty One decided to be more like a
glossy magazine.

Everyone wants to be your single source, conveniently forgetting that this is
the internet we are talking about and not the cable or phone company.

------
adrianwaj
MySpace Music is hopeless: the interface, the way content is presented, the
way search results are inaccurate and incomplete. The search field isn't even
selected by default.

If I were Murdoch I would be focusing on an awesome API for anyone to access
any and all of News Corp's material. A content warehouse, by which large users
can be charged. Uncooperating with Google is one thing, but it should be
balanced with this one.

Otherwise, News could run a public talent search for hackers, like The
Apprentice or Rockstar INXS, to find CEOs.

