AOL To Launch “Myspace Killer”

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1. Richard Dean
   

   April 19th, 2006 at 8:33 pm

   I’ve got to imagine some of the smaller players start combining at some point as the focus turns to making money, though the logistics would be interesting. Kind of messy bringing two “webs” together with all the users inter-connected.

   Also amazing how tagworld seems to be languishing, they’ve got great tools, but relatively flat userbase, even with some of their aggressive marketing, guess you can’t “market” users into being social, time will tell.

2. Michael Arrington
   

   April 19th, 2006 at 8:36 pm

   Richard, Tagworld is growing like a weed - it only launched in november…

3. eric
   

   April 19th, 2006 at 8:42 pm

   Where does XuQA.com fit in all this? They seem to be growing pretty fast.

4. Richard Dean
   

   April 19th, 2006 at 8:45 pm

   “Launched” is a pr term, they went live in early august and started acquiring traffic in late august. http://www.alexaholic.com/tagworld.com
   They issued press releases in november.

   But you are right, I guess languishing is an overstatement, I was comparing them to the top tier players, relative to tagged you are right, they are on pace.

   Here’s another interesting traffic graph to give a realistic launch comparison.
   http://www.alexaholic.com/tagg.....m+bebo.com
   I’d say bebo is growing like a weed, but you never know what goes into that.

5. alan jones
   

   April 19th, 2006 at 8:56 pm

   Sooner or later, MySpace’s growth will be constrained by the platform itself - the feature set is buggy, poorly integrated, and gets less and less innovative as it gets harder to support innovation for such a large customer base. Using it myself I see badly timed outages, random downtime and error messages all the time.

   The bigger it grows, the harder it will be to stop and take time out to re-architect stuff to make it scale sufficiently.

   It’s not a MySpace-killer, but it’s a MySpace-slowing factor.

6. Don Wilson
   

   April 19th, 2006 at 9:25 pm

   Wow, this is going to be interesting. I can’t wait to see this whole billion-dollar industry blow up.

7. Don Wilson
   

   April 19th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

   Wow, this is going to be interesting. I can’t wait to see this whole billion-dollar industry blow up when a google-like competitor (built by two young people) dominates everything.

8. John R
   

   April 19th, 2006 at 9:44 pm

   Eric, I think XuQA can mount a serious challenge to Facebook. They have better features and a better ’social’ scene from what I see.

   Also, the girls are hot.

9. Vaibhav Domkundwar
   

   April 20th, 2006 at 12:13 am

   I am not sure the user base for these services can be monetized beyond advertising, which may or may not be sustainable. Also, it is important to understand why these users flock to MySpace or bebo or others and will that be something that will last. I am not sure, it will and these users may switch to a mobile-myspace by end of this year from a totally new player perhaps? Still, the monetization issue persists. Thoughts?

10. Colin Strummer
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 1:55 am

    it’s not gonna be that cool…
    AOL watching everything..
    and flogging their wears..

11. Pete Cashmore
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 3:55 am

    Is this the “AimSpace” project we were talking about back in January? It was supposed to launch in March:

    http://mashable.com/2006/01/21.....ace-rival/

12. Roger Powerhouse
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 4:02 am

    Everything made at AOL starts as a decent idea (or at least a rip off of a decent idea). The delivery date keeps slipping back and the feature set keeps getting smaller. This wouldn’t be a big deal if they believed it iterative updates to their products.

13. Tim Johnson
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 5:26 am

    Come one guys, take you heads outta the ground. So much of this is random assertions about what college students will and won’t do, and making ungrounded assumptions about what they care about.

    “Google-like competitor”? Come on, it’s pretty clear that making a big social netowrking site is more than clean web-design or coming up with some neat algorithm.

    Take it from me, who’s actually in college, there are 2 things college students will spend money on. 1) T-shirts and 2) Food. Beyond ads, if you sell/facilitate either of those things on your site, you will have plenty of revenue from your users.

    Again, it must be said, most people don’t know this supposed “war” for their page views is going on. People don’t comapre networking sites that often to see which has better features. They just use whatever their friends are using.

    Assignment for everyone, go outside, and talk to some people who aren’t CS. That’ll give you a much clearer picture of what’s going on with the web.

14. G Beezy
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 5:37 am

    Either way that’s just stupid. Charge vs free…. hmmm… which one should I choose?

    Ignorance or arrogance. You decide.

    - GeorgeB
    http://www.onlyfeeds.com

15. JL101
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 5:51 am

    MySpace may own the masses right now, but they have turned a once fun and cool site into a commercial hell. Aol did the same thing years ago. College kids do not want to hang out with parents and cops hiding behind profiles.

    MySpace = Slow and Lame
    AOL = My grandma uses AOL
    FaceBook = A cool place to meet college chicks.
    Friendster = Old Skool
    Tagged = My 13 year old nephew uses it.
    LostCherry = Edgy, cool and up and coming.

16. GW
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:11 am

    With a name like LostCherry, it should do well with the VCs. ‘-)

17. The Entrepreneurial Endeavor
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:15 am

    With so many new social networks coming out and trying to be the next myspace it seems at some point that there is going to be so much competition, and people will belong to so many different sites, the quality of the content on one specific site is going to be diluted.

    New social networks need to go after a niche subject.

    Brian
    http://www.brianbalfour.com

18. pete patterson
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:20 am

    Anyone who uses AOL anything is computer-illit, but not beyond hope.

19. Tim Johnson
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:29 am

    @JL101

    What are you thinking. You comments about each of the sites are so off base. They reek of the avg. elitist techie mindset about the web and web2.0. Note everyone likes/needs/wants uber pristine design. MySpace allows users to do whatever they want to their pages, and that’s one thing people really like! Take your head out of your ass.

    Here’s a more realistic view of the companies/services you listed:

    MySpace = THE LARGEST SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE AND GROWING… clearly something is going right.
    AOL = All but 2 people in the US use their instant messaging service
    FaceBook = All but 3 people in college use this site.
    Friendster = Old Skool

20. Dave
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:32 am

    Xanga, one of the largest blogging sites recently launched a social network. I think they have over 20 million users already, it’d be interesting to see how their social network add on compares to the current reigning sites.

21. Tim Johnson
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:32 am

    @JL101 Continued (it cut off my previous post

    …Friendster = beating/contending with facebook!
    Tagged = It seems like EVERY 13 year old must be using it, cause they are kicked lostCharry’s butt.
    LostCherry = just look at the alexaholic graph, that’s all I’ll say.

    To summarize… get a clue!
    http://www.alexaholic.com/mysp.....6m&z=1

22. Mike Jones
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:33 am

    Pretty soon we’ll need a search engine devoted to listing just social networking sites - so many are popping up everywhere! A similar thing happened to the dating sites about 5 to 6 years and now 90% of the dating marketing is owned by the top 3 or 4 companies.

    Anyone want to venture a guess as who will remain as the big players?

23. Jacknut
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:36 am

    Someone wrote: “Take it from me, who’s actually in college, there are 2 things college students will spend money on. 1) T-shirts and 2) Food. Beyond ads, if you sell/facilitate either of those things on your site, you will have plenty of revenue from your users.”

    When I was in college, I spent all my money on beer and well… herbal pharmaceuticals. Collge must be lame now. Kinda like these Websites. I have a hard enough time keeping up with my friends in real life. I don’t need a Website so other people can “be my cyber-buddy”

24. JL101
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:47 am

    Tim….go and hang out on MySpace, Tagged and AOL…it sounds like you really fit in with the community there.

    Personally, would rather hang out on FaceBook or Lostchery. No matter what stats you spew on here….you can’t deny my opinion.

25. Tim Johnson
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:51 am

    @JL101
    Yes, that is your opinion, and it clearly isn’t the opinion of the 50 or so million people who use MySpace and don’t use facebook. And guess what, alot of money can be made off those extra 50 million people. Your opinion is fine, you just need to realize that few other people share it with you…that is, few people outside the web 2.0 blog-o-sphere.

26. Saul Weiner
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:52 am

    There’s an old saying that when the everyone in the crowd joins a market, it’s time to find a new one. AOL is pretty late to this crowded game. I forsee another losing venture for AOL. AOL need to innovate, not just follow.

27. BK
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 7:13 am

    In reply to Tim Johnson:

    campusfood already dominates the campus food market. They only have a small number of restaurants on certain schools, but their nice sleek design combined with online ordering is really well done. Facebook should enter this market. I am pretty sure they can do well.

28. BK
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 7:14 am

    I am sorry, I forgot to include a link on my above post: http://www.campusfood.com

29. Tim Johnson
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 7:25 am

    @BK
    Yep yep. I use campus food alot, it’s a great service. In Boston, where I am, they have just about every restaurant that we order from.

30. Roger Sillybottom
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 7:30 am

    AOL is planning on using AIM as leverage.

31. Tim Johnson
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 7:43 am

    BTW, for AOL to get anything going outside the US they need to totally change their branding. Even the recent move to just “AOL” instead of “America Online”, they need to do way more. Mention AOL to anyone outside the US and they’ll scoff at you. Everyone knows what it stands for.

32. Daniele Levy
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 8:53 am

    My $0.02 to this is that AOL is waaaaay late to the SN game. Their users are NOT the typical demographic of those sites, which skew younger and tech savvy (not the typical descriptor to an AOl user). If they come to the table with a product that emulates what MyS, Friendster, bebo, etc, have all been doing for 2 years + and just try to jam it down the throats of their captive audience, it’ll be a failure, period. Even Y!, which entered the fray a while ago, and is much ‘cooler’ than AOL as a young brand, has not been successful in getting their ‘360′ product off the ground in a meaningful way. Let’s see…

33. ALMA
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 9:05 am

    AOL has always been the same thing as myspace and friendster, profiles with pictures and an easy way to find people. all these networking sites are the same, and lame. SO OVER IT!!!!

34. Gunner
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 9:09 am

    I’ve been following this social networking boom for a really long time, and it seems like a lot of companies are attacking the same niche.

    i think myspace.com set a nice blue print by cornering the music market and thus coralling music fans into 1 site.

    facebook.com had a genius idea with college kids, and really cornered an amazing demographic that a lot of people still want to reach.

    ezboard, which is a grandfather of social networking (if you think about it) is apparently updating to give its users a web2.0 experience in message boards at yuku.com.

    I just wonder what AOL will bring that’ll make people switch. Tagworld has mad evident that you can’t advertise as a “myspace killer” or “better than myspace” and succeed.

35. Marc Canter
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 9:53 am

    Dude - I don’t know if yoiu read all this shit, but nexct time you do a chart like that - include Cyworld = 14M in Korea alone.

    

    That’s what they pay me for!

36. Jack
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 10:49 am

    Friendster having a late comeback? That’ll be all those annoying spam-u-like emails they keep sending me then…

37. Pete Cashmore
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 10:52 am

    Marc,

    I think Mike was focusing on US-centric networks. When Cyworld US launches for real, I’m sure he’ll give them a mention.

38. Alvin
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 10:59 am

    Sensing that most readers here are probably not aware of this, but Friendster is very VERY popular in Asia countries.

39. Decipho
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 11:03 am

    Interested to see how they will bring this together with AIM.

40. Don Wilson
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 11:17 am

    Tim Johnson said ““Google-like competitor”? Come on, it’s pretty clear that making a big social netowrking site is more than clean web-design or coming up with some neat algorithm.”

    Thanks for completely missing the point of what I meant. I don’t care about fancy algorithms, I mean coming up from a couple guys that completely dominated a once-thought finished industry.

41. Hoss
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 11:23 am

    There are also a lot of “social networking” sites for niche markets - for example, http://www.linkedin.com is popular for job networking, and I heard even monster.com plans on introducing similar features.

42. Pat
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 11:29 am

    Its interesting that you put Friendster up there and not Hi5. You might want to look at the alexa rankings:

    Hi5 (rank 78)
    Friendster (83)

    wonder when people will start talking about them.

43. Jason Kolb
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 1:55 pm

    I’ll bet somebody buys them. Google would be a good pick, they actually have the infrastructure to support all those users. They also have the infrastructure to make money off of them by selling AdWords and allowing people to make money using their MySpace account using AdSense.

44. hacker not cracker
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 3:12 pm

    AOL sucks and it doesn’t stand a change in this already crowded market. They’re better off buying a small semi-popular site to compete with the likes of Friendster and Myspace!

45. JD
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 4:24 pm

    Thank, god. We need something else. These social networks are seriously lacking. MySpace is the largest and most active of all but it’s a pile of crap. With all that money and corporate backing you’d think they’d be a lot more advanced than they are. They’re constantly rolling out features that refuse to work instead of fixing the same old problems they’ve had since launch. They’re just piling crap on top of crap. I can’t get enough of it though. Honestly, I need it. I’m keeping up with friends and meeting new ones like never before and there’s no better place to discover music. I hope AOL is strong enough to either take MySpace down or slap them in the face to finally get their act together and do something constructive. God, the social networking market is huge. Why aren’t more people jumping in on it? Shit, if I had the time and funds I’d devote my life to it. There’s a NEED for it. MySpace is WASTING valuable resources.

46. JD
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 4:44 pm

    Tim Johnson (Comment #30), I honestly believe MySpace is doing as well as it is because there’s nothing else like it and it became a fad. Fads die fast. MySpace isn’t necessarily doing anything right. They’re just existing with no rules but that’s going to catch up to them REAL fast. Users will become restless and smarter. And that’s not the geek in me talking. I’ve watched a lot of my friends get more into technology and the internet and use it for a variety of things. They’re learning and advancing on their own and they all have their complaints about MySpace. I garauntee when they see something better, see what the internet is capable of, and how they can use it they’ll leave. I watched my friends go from Hotmail to Gmail and I’ll watch them go from MySpace to whatever too. But then again I can’t back any of this up. My friends are only a few of the MySpace millions. I’m just going on the fact that they’re average-joes.

47. Shawn Carnell
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 5:15 pm

    http://ted.aol.com/index.php?id=167

48. John
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 5:49 pm

    As posted above, fads die quickly. Remember when the SubProfile craze was going on? I don’t see anyone with them anymore.

49. Tim Johnson
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 6:45 pm

    Yeah, a fad, lets look back at some fads in their early days…
    -TV
    -The Internet!
    -IPODs
    -Video gaming

    all declared fads by skeptics at the time who couldn’t see the big picture and the way lives were bing changed.

50. Phillip Grady
    

    April 20th, 2006 at 7:13 pm

    I agree with the last comment. People are getting more savvy about the internet and technology. They want to do more with it rather than it ‘just work’.

    MySpace will stay popular mainly because of music and artists being on it. No, not the big band, its the small unknown ones, the models, and other socialites who help drive people to the site.

    I don’t know if others will take over. Tagworld is ok, Facebook is in another category, Friendster can come back but it is not a MySpace, and I didn’t know about the others like Tagged and Lost Cherry.

51. Bob Hope
    

    April 25th, 2006 at 12:37 pm

    MySpace launched in 2003, btw.

52. Ragnar Heil
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 11:44 pm

    manual pingback:
    http://www.itfrontal.de/2006/0.....ung_v.html

53. Danny
    

    May 3rd, 2006 at 3:34 pm

    Uh oh

54. you suck
    

    May 9th, 2006 at 5:56 am

    you suck really bad since you blocked my space now we can not get on it

55. janice
    

    May 11th, 2006 at 11:56 am

    u should check all the myspaces and look in the profiles and there are some prettty nasty pictures

56. Desdubler
    

    May 19th, 2006 at 10:58 am

    This is all crap. Every other year someone comes up with a new online gimmick and then a crowd of companies decide to jump on the bandwagon. Thank goodness for OsiXs. Hopefully the internet madness is about to end.

57. Steve L.
    

    May 21st, 2006 at 10:07 am

    Were do i find some new MS layouts?

    Thanks,
    Steve

58. uqtvdply
    

    May 21st, 2006 at 10:19 am

    xpybkri zpjmdsg cjdilckltw

59. web hosting company
    

    September 28th, 2006 at 2:58 am

    Myspace will always have way more killers then AOL can have.

60. Mr Wave
    

    September 28th, 2006 at 4:13 pm

    Forever Geek has a great post on how MySpace is really hyping its 100 million user number to the press. It’s a great study. The study checked out 303 profiles and found that 50% of users don’t even show up in a month. That’s a very high attrition rate! I wonder what happened to those 50 million users?

    Here’s what I think are possible explanations:

    * MySpace users have 2 accounts. Like free email accounts (think Hotmail and Yahoo), many people own more than one account - one for personal email and one for spam. So, if indeed, the average MySpace user has 2 accounts, then it makes sense that 50% of them won’t show up after a month.

    Read More

61. pet
    

    November 13th, 2006 at 3:35 pm

    AOL would have to come up with something totally new to get the market to turn to them. They don’t exactly have the hip image that other sites have. Even yuku, which has the huge ezboard market behind them are adding new things to increase their appeal, but they are not starting from scratch in a niche market.