MySpace Losing Market Share, Money, Hope

myspace losing market share because us busines is walking with mediation , years ago all media talking about myspace it was a big attention for internet users but today there're telling us abo facebookand twitter , thats why all of us forgot about myspace , that's how the internet business deal .

Good points, GCK. I think MySpace's focus all along should have been on music. It should have remained a niche site devoted to the music community. I think it could have found continued success there but dropped the ball when trying to develop a mass social networking audience. Facebook clearly does a better job at broad social networking, and I don't see MySpace winning back users who are interested in that.

I agree with the previous points made about what Facebook and MySpace covers and cannot cover,  the flexibility of FB, that offers always more and more fun stuff to its users, and the difference between the target audiences of both sites. So, what should MySpace do?

Discovering America again, MySpace is more like a self-expressive social networking site- which was  mentioned in the previous posts. To me; what put MySpace at the back of the scene is the fact that it did not position itself in the right time as FB was gaining all the market share. It remained as the half social networking site and half a get - your - voice- heard site.

What FB does in terms of updating the applications, creating different communication chains through the apps like news feed, forwarded quizzes and so on, should be implemented as 'the things a musician would want in terms of networking' by MySpace. How can the MySpace user add more of his/her records? How can the quality be improved? What can MySpace offer in terms of creating music/musician polls, and more interaction between the artists? What else can this site offer as new, fun music applications? As an amateur musician, it would not be enough for me to upload a video of me playing guitar on FB BUT i would sign up in MySpace again- well, i don't use it anymore. 

What MySpace should consider is niche marketing-  their cover, target should always  always 'niche' as compared to FB anyways.  Finally, MySpace should evaluate the possibility of focusing on the musicians- music-friendly target which is smaller, yet requires a deeper focus, but not through merchandise but more like creating a 'more musical social networking'. 

 

The real question is: is Web Advertising effective.

The history of this as I remember was that Google used to be everyone's home page...then came MySpace and then Facebook.   The "profitability" of all these sites is based around delivering an audience to advertisers.  But do they really deliver the audience in the sense of presenting effective advertising that creates revenue?  

Let's face it -- much of advertising (some famous ad men might say all) is really a show of power.   You buy an ad during the Superbowl because you can...and you're competitors can't.  Same with banner ads.

However, Internet advertising, especially banner ads are incredibily ineffective.   One study shows that readers completely ignore banner ads (in fact, they read around them, treating them as margins).   They also ignore most photos.

What do people want from the web?  By far and away the real value is text.  Face it, social networking, Twittering, Yahoo chat -- they're all human relations mediated by text.   Ok, there is 2nd life -- but guess what, most of the interaction of the avatars is by text.

That is why I founded The Texeme Construct to work as a kind of text analysis and meme factory and to explore text on the web.   

Bottom line: this is all 21st century business...social networking, web advertising, knowledge search...we really still don't know what we are doing, and the book hasn't been written yet on who are the winners...we haven't even finished the preface...

 

 

After all it is social networking, isn't it? If my friends are in facebook, why should I go to myspace? So herd instincts plays a significant role

Sometimes a site maybe excellent with features but if another site has all the subscribers, people tend to flock there and would be difficult to move people. 

Anyway, like most businesses that has some maturity, there will be a two-horse race. I think myspace will still be around unless overtaken by some other sites, but is seems unlikely at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

MySpace's fate was sealed when it was referred to as "the new Booty Call" in the movie "He's Just Not That Into You"

Sad,  but true.

I don't know what else can be said except that we can sit back and watch the Intellectual Capital bleed out of MySpace and then watch where they cybertrolls scatter to find new people to stalk.

Ok, maybe that was an unfair characterization, but then again maybe it wasn't

I can't say I know all that many people who actively use MySpace anymore(myself included.) In my estimation the only thing MySpace really has going for it at this point are the artist and music pages that allow an artist to broadcast material. There is definitely  something to be said for that sort of exposure as an artist. 
 
It just seems like everything else that can be done on MySpace can be done easier/quicker/better on Facebook. 

Yeah, I don't really like the messy, highly annoying, over-colorful and all-over-the-places look of MySpace' pages either. But (if I try) I think I could understand why a lot of young teenagers (and obviously, many of them are not even 18 yet) prefer MySpace's style. It's almost like trying to figure out why kids like Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers...,  but anyway, the really main issue I had with MySpace when I cancelled my MySpace account awhile back was that there were too many spams - fake names requesting to be friends. I guess MySpace just lost my trust and the trust of many like me. And in my opinion, MySpace has become an unsafe place or unhealthy environment for young people to hang around at, as it's packed with Internet scams and bad people. Facebook was relatively "reliable" and "safe", but now I'm not so sure if that's still the case anymore, as there've been some virus attacks just recently. Maybe it's a sign we'll sooner or later see Web 2.0 social networking sites going into "recession".

Someone partially hit it before, but I think it goes further into why MySpace is falling and Facebook is rising. It's what the users get, and how much work they need to get it. I think it's the UI more than anything else.

Personally, I think everyone is a bit lazy online, you want the fewest clicks and everything to be summerized nicely for you. IE actually does a good job with this on this site with the article titles, and the first line or so, and then also includes part of the most recent comment. People actually get a taste of it before they click on it.

Facebook has your feed as your main page, you get a nice little summery of what your friends have been up to, what they have commented on, what other people have commented on about their stuff, thumbnails of uploaded pictures, summeries and thumbnails of videos, the first paragraph of a note they published, etc.

This gives you a wide open view of what is going on, and you can either comment directly there, or you can go venture further into your friends profile if something really interests you.

Then you turn the page to Myspace, not quite as smooth for giving you all the same information summeries, and you usually have to go click through a couple of screens to get to someone's page to see what they posted for photos or what their blog says. Then, as Cbrown said above, you have to deal with whatever background picture, text color scheme, or even possible music that your friend has put on their profile, and possibly need to click over to a 3rd person's site to see any kind of comment dialogue or comment on the same thing.

I think the best way to describe the 2 sites is that the user bases are trying to accompish 2 different goals. Myspace is a site for people who want to express themselves and broadcast themselves to the world.  Facebook is for people who want to actually network and collaborate on communications.

I think once you get past the teenagers and college students, you get to people who aren't as concerned with flashy screens as they are for informative screens, and then pile on top of that people who want a clean, uncluttered screen of information that they can scan quickly and look at what interests them, you are going to end up with more people moving to facebook.

Also, with MySpace slowly starting to "steal" features from Facebook, that is going to create some resentment amongst users who are going to see myspace as the follower, not the leader.

Great points, cbrown. I agree. I got tired of MySpace's messy interface awhile ago. I'm amazed anyone still uses the site.

Besides, that coveted 18-25 demographic is so Web 1.5. Everyone knows that the demo to get now is 30+.