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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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.