

Debate: What’s the Reason For MySpace’s Decline? - matthewslotkin
http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/03/MySpace-Debate

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jinushaun
Debate? What debate? MySpace was always a fad that was waiting for something
better to come along. It follows the same fate as LiveJournal and Friendster.
Facebook out-smarted, out-strategised, out-performed and out-visioned MySpace
and its News Corp owner. The site sucked from a visual and experience
perspective, and was completely unstable during its peak. Facebook's strategy
of real names, real identity, real relationships and expanding out from
colleges beat MySpace's strategy of letting sleazy 31 year olds chase 13 year
olds--both using fake identities and whose profile page featured obnoxious
animation and music. MySpace was a wild west of junk, but no actual "social
networking" happening at huge scale. It was always superficial--a glorified
hot or not.

MySpace is and always has been an entertainment portal littered with ads that
were as obnoxious and their users' people pages. The user experience worsened
following the News Corp buyout.

Facebook, OTOH, has always been about real identities and real relationships.
Its design, compared to MySpace, made it feel like a tool instead of a toy. As
a result, the content on Facebook has greater value and feels more legitimate.
Everyone is familiar with the dating term "Facebook official". That's the
power of Facebook. Facebook went beyond the primitive social networking
elements of "moods" (status updates), walls and photo sharing. They became the
de facto Identity Provider on the Internet.

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chris_j
I agree that Myspace sucked from a visual and experience perspective. It's
easy to see why Facebook killed it. When Facebook came along, it was a welcome
relief from the garish graphics and "Thanks for the ad!!!1" wall posts.

The real question here is not "What was it about Myspace, the site, that
sucked?" though. The question is "What was it about Myspace, the organisation,
that prevented it from fixing its sucky site?" It's probably safe to speculate
that Myspace, the organisation, knew that their site sucked and that
Facebook's site was better. What held them back from fixing it? Was it
clueless management, lack of talented developers or the decision to use a
particular technology that doomed them? I don't think that the recent debate
has cleared that one up yet.

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abraxasz
Well, the only people I know who use Myspace are those who play in a music
band. It might be different in the US (I live in France), but the impression I
have is that Myspace is more a gallery for budding artists than a real social
service..

The thing is that since many people are on facebook now, if you want to share
something with your friends, it's much easier to do it on facebook than on
Myspace..

Again, that's how I see things from France, but I'm curious to know how it
goes elsewhere..

~~~
chris_j
Same in the UK. I only really ever used Myspace for music (either checking out
bands or posting my own songs in a fit of vanity). I don't think Myspace ever
achieved critical mass as a social network here, certainly not among people
that I know.

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RBr
The argument presented in the article blames MySpace's decline on "staff,
architecture, and business plan".

While I agree that these things are contributing to the decline in MySpace's
influence and traffic, the underlying problem is the engagement of the
community. MySpace is a Social Networking site that rely on a community of
users.

People want to be at "the coolest party". They want to talk to the coolest
people and engage in the coolest party games. In a separate, but similar
example, musicians need to reinvent themselves in order to maintain their
mass-market appeal.

MySpace's failure is that it hasn't re-invented itself to stay cool. Their
recent design change was too little, too late and relied far too much on the
past. The redesign was like "the old guy at the party" trying to make
conversation - everyone feels a bit odd that he's there.

Facebook will suffer the same fate unless they eventually reinvent themselves
or truly transition into becoming a Social Network Platform. Something new
will come along that has slightly cooler tech but more importantly, draws the
coolest collection of people.

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mixmastamyk
MySpace sucks and has always sucked, it just had good timing. Sooner or later
something better was bound to come along and it did. I always laugh when they
try to blame it on Los Angeles, haha.

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eam
I also think what slowly killed it was the entire "radical" redesign. Read
some of the comments left on Tom's page here
<http://www.facebook.com/myspacetom> and here <http://www.myspace.com/tom> not
many happy campers.

