

The Smart Execs Leave Before The Fall. - thepanister
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/04/smart-execs-leave-before-the-fall/

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sam_in_nyc
In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with being second place. Even if Facebook
"conquers" MySpace... so what? What's wrong with being ranked, oh, about #8,
of all websites?

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swombat
Well, don't forget that the dynamics of social networks as such that they lose
value exponentially if people start to leave. A social network that's not
growing fast enough is probably dying. So the long term prospects are not to
be number 2, but to be out of the race.

~~~
Brushfire
Thats fair, but if you ask anyone in the music community, it doesnt look like
myspace is going to be out of the race anytime soon. Its their job to make
this strength (perhaps the last one they have) work to revive them.

Personally, I dont think the issue is leaving users, becuase facebook will
deal with that too eventually (or at least hoards of inactive users). Rather,
I think the issue here is the inability to reinvent themselves / make big
changes becuase of their fun corporate overlords.

There are probably some awesome designers and developers that know the massive
changes that needs to be made at myspace to make it a winner again, but are
being given no incentive (or negative) to go after those changes.

The best part about BEING #2, which has served facebook, but which could also
serve myspace in the future, is that you can learn on #1's dime. Look at their
mistakes/problems, and fix them. Facebook has had notorious issues with their
ad targeting system, their developer platform, etc. Myspace has bigger issues
to fix first, but if given enough leeway they could fix their own issues and
grow again.

