Believe it or not, there was a time where Facebook did not
reign supreme in the world of social media. Those of us that were tech savvy and
a part of the social media world remember a time before Facebook where we all
had a MySpace. MySpace as we all know eventually died but why did it die and
just why are we all okay with it being gone.
MySpace was a trail blazer but as in most cases it’s not who
is first but instead who perfected it. Henry Ford didn't invent the first
automobile but he did perfect it. MySpace may have made the first major
platform for social media but Facebook came along and perfected it. MySpace
laid the foundation but Facebook came along and organized it and made it more appealing
to the masses, made it more user friendly for everyone to enjoy. MySpace has
lost over forty million unique visitors per month, lost both co-founders, laid
off the vast majority of its staff and more generally, has diminished to a
cluttered afterthought of the power it once was (Lee).
Another one of MySpace’s failing points was it was unable to
keep up with the ever evolving web. This is where Facebook excelled and gave the
people what they wanted and left MySpace in the dust wondering how to catch up.
MySpace was created by people in the entertainment industry and was music based
at first as opposed to the founders of Facebook who were more tech savvy. It
was easier for people to connect with friends via Facebook as it was MySpace.
Also in my personal opinion Facebook was more genuine at first whereas MySpace
was already flooded with fake profiles and internet creeps. MySpace began to
get flooded with young high schoolers who as young high schoolers are were very
immature. Facebook was a breath of fresh air to get away from the staleness
that MySpace had become.
Once you fall behind it is only common that you will try and
catch up. This catch up process is also what laid waste to MySpace. In a effort
to catch up to Facebook and try and do something new that wasn’t done yet,
MySpace tried to create every feature as opposed to focusing on a couple new
features and doing them well. This is an admitted mistake by former founder
Chris DeWolfe because of trying to accomplish so much and not focusing on the
little things, a majority of these new features were buggy and dysfunctional
(Lee).
The final down fall of MySpace was its lack of revenue
building as compared to Facebook. I remember MySpace in my later years as a
user that the site was just flooded with advertisements that didn’t pertain to
anything. They just became an eye sore. Facebook has its advertisements but they
organized them in a way where they did not take away from the product. They also
were geared towards the user based on the pages and products the user would
like. All in all researcher Danah Boyd compared user migration from MySpace to
Facebook and began referring to MySpace as the “digital ghetto” as to where
Facebook became a safe haven for more elite users (Lee).
With everything accounted for I believe that MySpace just
became outdated. As brought up in the beginning normally the first to introduce
something are not the ones that last but more the ones that come along later
and perfect it as it was with Reddit and Digg. The reason why I believe we are better
off without MySpace is because we already do have Facebook and so many other
forums of social media such as Instagram and Twitter that there just isn’t room
for MySpace anymore. There isn’t any
more telling of a fact than that MySpace originally sold for $580 million in
2009 and recently sold for $35 million -- $65 million less than what they were
asking for and over $500 million less than what News Corp had originally paid. We
can all thank MySpace for what they brought us with social media but I think it’s
about time for them to bow out and exit stage left.
Works Cited:
Lee, Amy. MySpace
Collapse: How The Social Network Fell Apart. Huffington Post. page<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/30/how-myspace-fell-apart_n_887853.html>.
Web. 30 June 2011.
Antonio, I agree with you about MySpace. I think that it should be shut down altogether. Honestly, I think that it’s starting to get redundant with sites like Facebook and Youtube. You mentioned that Ford didn’t invent cars but improved on the manufacturing of them with his assembly line. Facebook in a sense did the same thing with MySpace by adding games, videos, instant-messaging, and other ways of making communication easier. While, MySpace is trying to reinvent itself and turn into what seems like a YouTube knock-off, “… in the grand scheme of things, MySpace is probably better off dying a quick death now than prolonging its painful slide into irrelevance any longer” (McCarthy). Besides, since there are now so many other sites that work on this concept; and doing it well, MySpace would have even more competition with Twitter, YouTube, Foursquares, and of course, Facebook. Another reason why MySpace should die is because the owners can help employees find new jobs in the field, as opposed to being forced to shut down and leave them in the lurch. “If executed well, it could be held up as a landmark example of when and how to wind things down” (McCarthy). For these reasons, I believe that MySpace should close down.
ReplyDeleteWork Cited
McCarthy, Caroline. "Should MySpace just die already?."CNET. CNET, 12 Jan 2011. Web. 1 Apr 2014. .
I would also agree that MySpace is outdated and took too long for them to work on better progress of the speed of the site. This is why it didn’t last “The site was slow to innovate, had no real understanding about itself as a brand, held minimal financial control and seemed unable to keep up with its ever-ageing audience” Which means there was no main target for any age group besides “teens” and the older crowd didn’t “understand the use of the site. Another reason why MySpace died out is due to the “Lack of innovation” which didn’t make it very appealing as other sites did “here is little comparison between MySpace and Facebook as a product. Facebook takes seconds to master and constantly adapts around a user’s network of friends, their likes and the games they play on the site. But whether a MySpace user has one friend or a thousand, the product will still work in largely same way”. MySpace was good at the beginning but it didn’t focus on making it better and easier for its users that’s why all the other social network sites began to grow as “MySpace died out” but is still used and not forgotten. Due to the growth of the other successful sites “The site had repositioned as it became obvious it was never going to compete with the leading social networking websites in its previous state. It had admitted defeat” this is something we all need to know about and should never forget. MySpace made it possible for all the other sites to be successful by always trying to look for improvements “ this is why new media always try to do updates often for improvements” MySpace is died but will resurrect soon……
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marketingweek.co.uk/four-reasons-why-myspace-failed-to-retain-the-social-network-crown/3022208.article