Tuesday, June 23, 2009
5 Reasons Why MySpace is Dying & Facebook is Growing
Today, a second round of layoffs hit MySpace, one of the most popular social networking companies. MySpace is owned News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) , the media conglomerate run by entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch. NewsCorporation also owns Fox and the Wall Street Journal.I created a a short list of my top reasons MySpace's struggles continue, as Facebook continues to attract thousands of new users. I expect many of you to disagree with at least a point or two, and I'm aware of the fact that the MySpace vs. Facebook debate won't end anytime soon. I'm simply sharing my opnions, and I'd love to hear yours.
5 reasons for MySpace's downfall:
1. The "Teenager site" stigma.
MySpace has unsuccessfully tried to shed its image as a magnet for teens and scum bags stalking teens.Regardless of any demographic stats touted by MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta or any other company executives, I'm convinced the public's perception of the social network is that it's geared toward a teenage audience.
Ask anyone you know to play word association with MySpace, and I guarantee you their reply will include terms such as: teenagers, high school kids,younger people, or MTV crowd.
2. Facebook's unique appeal.
Initially, Facebook had an exclusive format limited to college students and alumni. The user-friendly format was so successful at reconnection old classmates, it generated a buzz among the college-age and 20-somethings crowd, before it expanded to the general. As a result, it was comparable to a hot company that opened its stock for public trade. Once Facebook's floodgates opened, an eager group of investors (new members) poured right in.
3. MySpace was sleeping at the wheel.
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. While MySpace was enjoying its rein as the world's most popular social networking site, Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of his crew at Facebook were improving the user interface with applications and other innovative features to broaden Facebook's appeal to a larger market and enhance the user experience. New MySpace copied Facebook features, and a new tone was set to the race.
4. Criminal activity in the news.
Craigslist has recently suffered through several PR nightmares, including the "Craigslist killer." MySpace was frequently in the news for various child predator cases. With tens of millions of registered users, the law of averages means a few hundred creeps are bound to be on the network.
To MySpace's credit, administrators collaborated with law enforcement to locate and remove registered sex offenders, but it may have been too little, too late, to save Myspace's reputation among concerned parents.
5. Weak spam filters.
MySpace mail inboxes are inundated with friend invites from spammers, including user pages directed toward adult-rated sites. The frequency and volume of messages these illegitimate "friends" is a nuisance most users don't want to deal with.
Posted By Matt O'Hern at 04:08 PM
Permanent Link: 5 Reasons Why MySpace is Dying & Facebook is Growing
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(13) Comments on 5 Reasons Why MySpace is Dying & Facebook is Growing
Pretty good list. I certainly agree with the spamming!! I'd add to that list that myspace pages are way, way to loud. Maybe I'm just old, but the themes and colors and "bling" all over myspace was way too much to handle.
Comments by Jonathan : Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 10:52 PM
MySpace pages have become over-saturated with too much user-created media.
Background files and graphics that are way too large for web consumption, tied with audio and video that start on page load (also slowing down page load) have made MySpace unwieldy - even on high-speed connections.
Tie the ever-present, and sometimes slow to start music, in and MySpace is off-limits to cube-dwellers who want to check in twice a day without blasting Nirvana all over the office.
The beauty of Facebook is a minimal - and consistent - page layout (though annoying in the most recent iteration) with no "extras" to slow access time.
Now, if I could only get my friends to stop sending me APP spam. I don't CARE which decade fits my personality? And who made the app - and where's the info going?
Comments by Craig : Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 09:00 AM
I disagree I love the profiles and how you can express yourself on your page. That is the reason I am against facebook it is just WAY to minimal. But I agree the people at facebook were on there game with the features they were ahead of the game.
Comments by Jen : Friday, July 24, 2009 at 12:08 AM
This is a well written article, and you prove your point very well. It's unbiased and blatantly true.
Still, I am one of those people who refuse to join facebook. I started out on Myspace and I disagree with the idea of joining another network just because everyone else wants to jump ship. Myspace may have its flaws, but it works fine and I dont think that Facebook needed to enter the marker......Twitter definitely didn't need to enter the market.
It is painful though, because my Myspace page feels so deserted that I think tumbleweeds are rolling through it, but it's without my control now.
Comments by Hulbert : Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 09:10 AM
A passable attempt to explain things, but I'll tell you the two real reasons.
First, when myspace started the fun part of it was going on and looking at other people's pages, typically friends of friends. When employers and dirty old men started going on there a widespread fear developed that private information was being seen by the wrong crowd. So everybody started making their pages private. This was already the norm for facebook and it's what a lot of dedicated myspace fans hated about that site. But with pages made private the fun of myspace half evaporated.
Second, collectively our tastes in social media changed. I was making fun of twitter in 2006 and saw no use to joining. By 2008 it was on the news as the hot new thing, and even I wanted to sign up. Before I liked the long-style communication of myspace blogs, and didn't really care for the fast note messages on facebook or twitter. Now I like the fast messages more and don't care for the blogs so much. The same thing has happened with a lot of other people.
Comments by Frank : Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 02:15 PM
The argument is logical athough I'll say that myspace is OK for music.
myspace outside of that can be a joke...why? because it is more than obvious that making something easier for someone doesn't increase the quality. If you wanted a website well aol gave you 2 megs of space for well over 10 years. I highly doubt that most of the people that have sites know how to code them. There is a lack of matching colors or legit backgrounds. I do NOT want to hear 8 mp3's at once and six videos.
If a grown adult told me they'd have a myspace account I wouldn't want to deal with them, hire them, have a relationship with them etc.
ALL I want to do on these sites is communicate and to make it easy and that's what facebook does.
Comments by nedm : Friday, September 18, 2009 at 01:18 PM
Myspace WAS a popularity contest.
Facebook IS a social-networking site.
Comments by Ascends : Friday, October 09, 2009 at 08:26 PM
Social networking or social conformity for people too dumb to think for themselves?
There is nothing wrong with MySpace - and FaceBook is just someone else putting lipstick on a pig and calling it their own.
Many of the people I know that have moved to FaceBook seem to do it because FaceBook seems more "grownup" or "adult-like".
What is that crap? I saw very grown-up and professional looking MySpace pages.
Everyone on FaceBook looks exactly the same - like the pages were made on Orwell's Animal Farm
Woo Hoo. We all look the same and we all do the same thing in the same fashion - and all of our pages are "white".
Some people might even call it... ReichBook...
Comments by The Herder : Wednesday, November 04, 2009 at 04:15 PM
Simply put, many of us left myspace because of who owns it--talk about a group wanting "one way" and nothing else--Fox news and Murdoch are just that. Watch what happens when anyone disagrees with their view of the world on their "newscasts"...all social networking is silly, and facebook is shifting demographically to an older audience because old people (like me) enjoy the ease of catching up with people we got too busy to talk to or actually go visit--you feel like a better friend by "writing on their wall" or "poking" them every now and then. Kids are leaving facebook just like they left myspace now and going to other media because they hate having anything to do with what old people (anyone over 25) does for fun...it's simple, really.
Comments by coachb : Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 09:45 AM
MySpace has a couple things going for it. The UI is far more intuitive than Facebook's. Facebook is a convoluted mess, and the security features are too strict on Facebook. It's fun to think of an old contact and find their site on MySpace because a lot aren't worth the trouble of being set as friends. Aside from that...
MySpace is definitely for kids. Go to the website and what do you see promoted by MySpace? Celebrity gossip, Obama-mania, new concerts, and other kid-oriented things. I feel like an adult walking into a Hot Topic when I go to MySpace.
Also, let's not forget a major problem with MySpace: the bugs! Nothing works reliably on the MySpace site.
That said, another problem with Facebook is the huge hole in its obsessive security features: you cannot approve comments before they appear on your page! What were they thinking in failing to implement this?
Comments by Steve : Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 09:14 PM
Facebook is just another hot trend just like myspace was a few years ago. We can all argue that facebook is winning because of this or that, but the truth is we are all about "fitting in" no matter how much we like to think we are being true to ourselves. So when word got around and all your friends or co-workers were saying "myspace is so over. Join facebook" or "i don't go on myspace anymore, but you can find me on facebook" we all just had to join to feel like we are in sync with the trend and the times. No one wants to be teased or left behind. It reminds us too much of being kids when things like fashion or music changed in popularity and we all jumped wagon because "it is the thing to do"......I personally love myspace better at heart, but all my friends left myspace. Sad? Yes. But what can I do? So I joined facebook. I still go to myspace, and write blogs, because i can't let it go, but facebook is "in" now and everyone wants to be in
Comments by Vidora Le Marcaksewjyk Smith : Thursday, January 07, 2010 at 08:53 AM
You totally left out the non-existant tech support at MySpace.
Comments by OngoingErrorForOneYear : Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 12:50 AM
Since I heard of Twitter and Facebook, I didn't even think twice before I rejected them.
Nothing attracted me to them. Frankly, I dodn't like writing every single thing I'm doing on Twitter or having a blank page with no personality.
Ex: "Hey guys, im just here at my house watching t.v." or "Im tying my shoe.." lame -_-
Or in Facebook, how ALL the pages look the same. Boring.
Anyways, even though everyone has moved to Facebook/Twitter, they will also die soon and ppl will move on, BUT I will stay were I am because I HATE being a follower and hate the idea of trying to fit in.
I like to be unique, the odd one out. It makes me different and its better than blending in with everyone.
Comments by Kassandra 17 =] : Friday, January 29, 2010 at 12:57 AM
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