MySpace: We don’t need Web 2.0
Marshall Kirkpatrick
129 comments »
News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin told company investors today that, “If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flickr, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace.” MultiChannel News is reporting that Chernin said there is no reason why News Corp. couldn’t build parallel businesses, targeting YouTube in particular. “Given that most of their traffic comes from us,” he said, “if we build adequate if not superior competitors, I think we ought to be able to match them if not exceed them.”
What didn’t get discussed in the coverage of Chernin’s talk to the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference today are the steps the company has taken that have made it more difficult for outside companies to spread their presence inside MySpace, like blocking external links in Flash widgets. Could more hindrances like that be forthcoming? [To clarify, this is the context in which Chernin's comments were made, he did not discuss blocking other company's widgets.]
While competitor Facebook won accolades for opening an API to outside developers, it’s understood that there is probably zero chance of such openness from MySpace.
It’s unclear what more MySpace could do by way of features alone to compete with YouTube. The MySpace video player has embedding, related videos, top videos and viewer comments. Chernin said that MySpace’s video efforts have been small so far and estimated that between 60 and 70% of YouTube’s traffic comes from MySpace. That may become less the case as the YouTube community develops its own stars who use MySpace pages as static points of reference, at most.
Chernin also said that the company was looking to put more of its own commercial video on MySpace. “You’re going to see us starting to play more aggressively on the entertainment side of that site,” he said. Commercial video on YouTube has been a big gamble, with some of it well received and some of it eliciting a very hostile response from users.
To summarize: the COO of News Corp. says that Web 2.0 is leaching traffic off of MySpace, that they can build their own services to compete with any of it and that there’s going to be an increasingly aggresive commercial push on the site. That sounds both dangerously arrogant and like a real validation of fears that MySpace dependency is too risky for outside developers.
Om Malik had a piece in Business 2.0 yesterday titled Suddenly Everything’s Coming Up Widgets, where he said “Everyone’s a winner here: MySpace, because it becomes stickier; YouTube and Slide, because they get the traffic; and the user, because he or she gets it all on one page.” It sounds like MySpace’s owners may not want to play a game where everyone wins.
I hope we hear from others at Newscorp who have something different to say, or that Chernin’s statements are qualified. The innovation that comes from many different organizations swapping data and allowing users to port information from one platform to another is key characteristic of what’s called Web 2.0. Chernin’s statements may make business sense, but they don’t bode well for innovation. If you want to get a hint of how cool cross site widgets can be, check out Typepad’s approach or the new widget marketplace Widgetbox.
I guess no one should be surprised. Perhaps all the outside developers who hate MySpace’s dreadful code will feel a new sense of freedom.
Web 2.0 is great for webmasters -It lets them do all the work and Myspace is right they did start off Web 2.0
http://webiztoday.com - Web2.0 Markting
-Jack
MySpace is god awful. A few years down the road this idiotic fad will be over, then what MySpace? Stop bragging about nothing. You have no clear indication that this site will continue it’s popularity at the current rate. They diss YouTube so much, yet they completely copied it with their own video hosting service within MySpace? Right. Screw you MySpace, I’m sick of 1995 designs showing up again on the web.
A pretty bold statement that’s for sure! I think some of these Web 2.0 companies helped MySpace grow as well.
myspace - a high quality product
I figure ISPs are also only parasites that only have customers because they want to surf myspace all day.
biofusion, I completely agree with you. MySpace sucks so bad, it is just not tolerable.
The only reason why it is so big is because it has the majority market share, and people use social sites because everyone else is using them. This itself was kickstarted by their spamming ways.
Personally, I myself could never start a generic social network such as MySpace, one that appeals to “everyone”. It’s just irresponsible, given the fact that so many children have been abused and taken advantage of as a result of that, and other social networks like it.
I could not have that on my head, and frankly, MySpace is a parent’s worse nightmare. This is another issue though.
I have two things to say about myspace. Let me start off with the technical side:
Myspace as a site is quite bad. We have all seen the scaling issues due to the hodge podge of coldfusion, asp, and IIS. (Not trying to start a flame war, but the fact is, it [myspace] doesn’t scale ) Once the American teen population realizes that it can’t customize their myspace “page” how they want, due to the commercial lock-ins, they are going to be mad. Hopefully this will increase the amount of users on facebook, especially after talk of open registration.
The last time I used myspace was to completely cover up all of the ads on the page and attempt to do it decently. (See my post here. ) It saddens me that simple stuff like that doesn’t spread. If people were covering up the ads, they would be getting rid of a source of income for myspace (granted, it violates the terms of service).
After I made that demo account, I realized that quite a few of the people on myspace are spam bots. That demo account gets bombarded with spam messages for adult chat rooms, spam sales, v1c0d1n, etc. Not to mention half of the people on the site are pedophiles, which leads me to my next rant.
The last time I was at the local public library, there were two guys that were in their mid to late thirties, sending teenage girls messages for at least three hours straight. One of them was still on the site when I left after the three hours. People really need to sit down and think about using that site…
~Cody
http://www.threadbound.com
wow. arrogance cometh before the fall…
I love it!!! everyone hates myspace…
“it doesn’t scale”
“cover the ads and kill them”
“pages look awful”
“spam”
Why do people love to say things are bad/gonna disappear/fad?
Get real. Myspace is a hit.
Too bad none of us thought of it or did it.
You know.. The “design, look, feel, colors, etc” of myspace must be dismissed.. as someone who hated it from the beginning I now understand how most people feel that it allows them to be creative and personal with their profile.. unlike say facebook.. even though my eyes are pleased by the organization and simplicity of facebook… the profiles are not near as personal..
One thing I did hear that eased my mind is that the poor code structure of myspace is on purpose.. to how help cut down on screen scraping and tools that could pull people from myspace… that might be an acuse but it sounds good.. good for business too..
mySpace will AOL themselves if they pursue an isolationist path. Facebook and others who take an open approach will defeat the myspace beast by encouraging a 2.0-style community.
If I was working at Facebook or any of the other sites, I’d begin a “we’re widget-friendly” campaign now. And if security becomes an issue again (spyware/virusus), I’d create a certification program and make sure new widgets are reviewed and added quickly and nimbly.
Pulling up the ladder to the tree fort is not a good business strategy at this point. I hope Chernin is just talking out his ass, and the smart folks at Newscorp actually know what they are doing.
@Narendra, oh yeh, MySpace is going down alright. I can feel it - really.
The fact is, the MySpace guys (ex spammers) are not cutout for this new Web, that we call 2.0. Their ideas are bad, bad, bad, but because so many people feel locked into using the service (because their friends are using it), they can’t ever get any real sense of what works and what doesn’t.
I am confident that if asked, would MySpace users move to another network if their friends did, they would say Yes. Because that’s the point.
MySpace will be the failure story of the Web 2.0 era - I just hope people will remember that they were never “one of us”, that they were not a part of the Web 2.0 movement, and that it was this that led to their demise.
Yes Will, none of us thought to create a crappy site. MySpace was originally designed for bands, so obviously they didn’t even think the site would get this big.
MySpace is so badly setup it’s seriously beyond. Especially in the navigation side of things, the user interface is like stepping back 20 years. Everything is scattered and it’s really hard to manage things. Then I have to wait a couple minutes for pages to load with glitter images, 2 songs playing at once, and 5 movies that turn on at the same time. There’s not one useful feature MySpace has, there are plenty of better alternatives.
Get real. MySpace blows.
@Will:
“Too bad none of us thought of it or did it.”
Eh? There were social networks before MySpace, and will be after. MySpace has not innovated…if you look into how they got their userbase, you’ll understand. (Spam.)
This blog really is for Web guys, and tech enthusiasts…can we please keep it that way? Not to be rude.
@Tim:
I assure you, their poor code is not good for business. They can save millions upon millions in bandwidth costs every year, if they just coded properly.
I’m not being rude.. .just when I read these comments, they seem a bit like sour grapes… The site does look “odd” and is down often, but it is a success… I wish I put something out like that, and had it be a rocket like myspace has.
Myspace will go down in time. They have failed to build the priceless loyalty needed to retain users once a superior alternative emerges. Moreover, they give incentive to the folks building complementary apps to go elsewhere or create competing apps.
I’ve been on myspace damn near since inception. My friends have grown bored with it. We don’t interact nearly as often and we never visited the advertisers in the first place. Eventually a greatly superior alternative (facebook?) will come along and the users will convert in mass.
@Chris
I agree with you. I think that once Facebook opens up to the masses, I will migrate over. Even if this means having only a few contacts. If I’m getting a better service I’m all up for it. MySpace has nothing unique to offer, it’s a total mess.
Lets face it there are 3 things about myspace that made it work:
1) Half-naked teenagers and folks who like that sort of thing
2) Music
3) Eveyone got their URL! Yep, before myspace people had to figure out how to find other people. Given that most folks can’t spell, that was a big problem. My space solved this problem by getting rid of URL.
Web 2.0 elegance, drag and drop, clever responsive UI, this is not what most people want. Look at my space pages they are not ugly, they are VERY ugly. In fact today I was shown a preview of another new social network. Its beautiful, and the moment I saw it, I knew its not going to work.
So why are we surprised, that MySpace is acting like a monopoly? Remember the one we had for sometime called MSFT? It took sometime to dethrone that one…
Alex
http://www.adaptiveblue.com
All of the mega-hit social netoworks will eventually fade away. That just’s what happens to anything popular. It will be the networks that cater to niches that last.
Facebook needs to hold its horses. It should expand its brand with other products instead of trying to battle myspace.
think about the two points though..
No scraping of profiles.. (keep the business you have)
- no “come to my myspace look alike.. our wizard will move your profile”
- no extra bandwidth from other apps
- no ability to mass download peoples profiles (helpes keep the bad people out)
Whats wrong with that.. and I bet its worth the cost of bandwidth to keep this many people on board.
Someone just has to create a myspace thats actually does something on the next level of social interaction. It can’t be that hard.. and the navigation could be a hundred times better…
Just remember.. people on myspace (who arn’t geeks) think of their profile as their life online.. and by saying you hate their glitter and videos you would be more directly interpreted as hating their… well… life.. and thats not a very nice thing.. surely not the accusers intention..
myspace has brought a whole different group of computer users online.. the “social” type that could care less about computers.. not a bad thing but it shows that myspace has something special…
dblones: well I hope they don’t fade away.. we have turned a page in personal interation online in a large scale.. myspace its self might go away but we need to creat an atmosphere of different people together in a common place.. without predijuce
Hmmm. This has triggered strong emotions from people.
Arrogant statement: maybe
Correct statement: definately
Clearly YouTube and others have used MySpace to bootstrap their services. No one can deny that. Whether it is for the overall good of the industry that MySpace allows an open policy, that’s clearly an open debate.
@Paul: MySpace as poster child of “Web2.0 failure”?!? I think not after being acquired for $580mm in *cash*. That’s what %90 of Web2.0 Founders are looking for: that big acquisition check. Don’t be so naive and take those CEO’s bait. They just want your traffic to sell off for their retirement funds. It’s the same old story…
Let MySpace think it has a monopoly on teenagers. That type of arrogance is exactly how they will lose it.
MySpace is a fad for 14 yr old girls. MySpace will pull a Friendster within 2 years. Mark my words.
MySpace grew because of it’s openness. That was the difference between it and friendster - the loosely connected bits. Don’t you just love it when they get bought and the corporate boys say “Well, first thing we have to do is put up some walls to stop these people leeching offa us. Thieves!” What part of community don’t they understand? Community is about connections.
Some good info here;
http://www.startup-review.com/.....-start.php
BTW, Zapr is (trying to be) one of those leeches.
Cooqy has just completed yet another technical workaround to the MySpace Flash “security” that disables dynamic linking to other web pages from widgets.
Back in July Cooqy was first to find an exploit that allowed Flash widgets to open popup windows, after MySpace implemented “security” measures that had blocked popup windows from Flash widgets. MySpace quickly fixed the hole we found within 24 hours of it being reported, as reported here: http://mashable.com/2006/07/31.....ce-update/.
The new workaround uses a combination of a Flash widget and an HTML button to allow the redirection of the browser to specific eBay items being advertised. We do not anticipate that MySpace can defeat our new solution, unless they should choose to not allow any Flash widgets at all on profiles.
You can test drive the workaround at http://www.myspace.com/cooqy
Merchants are actively exploring new ways to reach customers, especially on MySpace. Widget providers like Cooqy will continue to innovate in spite of MySpace’s attempts to stifle competition and suffocate a thriving widget community.
Robert Yeager
Founder
Cooqy
“I’m sick of 1995 designs showing up again on the web”
amen!
This is such great news for the “Web 2.0″ companies. MySpace is broadcasting to the world that they don’t “Get it”. They are behaving exactly as the big old-telecom companies are with “It’s my pipe”.
Who is going to win? The users of course, as competitors (me) scramble to offer the fleeing MySpacians what MySpace won’t give them anymore.
The Om Malik article was in Business 2.0, not Business Week.
>>Chernin’s statements may make business sense, but they don’t bode well for innovation.
No, they don’t make business sense. For example, YouTube videos embedded on a myspace page increase the value of that myspace page. “Yes, but we’ll replace all those videos with myspace videos!!” Perhaps they’ll let the market decide. Or block them. Which makes bad business sense: http://tinyurl.com/f2c73
Beautiful design: Flickr
Beautiful code: Digg
A world of choice: Youtube
For everything else there’s Myspace…
@biofusion: MySpace fills a void. Sure the site could have been designed and implemented a little better - but the concept of social networking MySpace was shooting for isn’t an awful one
Weird, people posting comments here were trying to defend that MySpace was Web 2.0 before and I was argueing with them that it’s not. Now that they say they aren’t, all of the lambasting comes out. Typical.
All this wonderful debete over Web 2.0. Personally I don’t care how a site works, only that it is intuitive and fun! I won’t waste my time on those old 1995 website designs. I perfer to stick in the new and more fun interfaces. (Whether they are Web 2.0 or not.).
I’m very curious to see how the Avarice: GE website site comes out personally. (http://www.playavarice.com/). - The concept looks neat but will it be fun? Guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
Jim Holts
Ahhh, now *this* is the Web 2.0 echo chamber that makes the culture so entertaining!
Don Wilson: You were right all along. MySpace was *never* Web 2.0 — everyone saying that it was were just desperately trying to glom onto a real success story so they could say that there’s actual substance behind Web 2.0 instead of just a bunch of hype.
Maybe someone should actually explain why Web 2.0 would benefit MySpace or its users, because right now, the percentage of MySpace users who give a shit about Web 2.0 and other buzzwords is hovering right around 0.0 percent. “Oh, but if only they realized all that they’re missing out on, they’d fall in love with Web 2.0!!” Because we all know how Facebook users really embraced those recent changes that Web 2.0 fanboys thought were so great, right?
“Those dumb Facebook users, they don’t understand how cool this stuff is. They should just take a deep breath and relax.” Hah, and the *MySpace* guy is the one getting accused of arrogance.
It’s a wonder so many people here have their panties in a bunch about the whole thing anyway, seeing how they apparently can’t stand anything about MySpace. The 20 or so posts decrying what a horrible site MySpace is doesn’t sound *anything* like dorks in high school sitting in the back of the class snarking on all the people who didn’t invite them to the happening party on the weekend. No, really.
Shame to hear that MySpace doesn’t scale, though. It’s only by far the largest site of its type, I’m sure it can’t hold a candle to the latest kewl Ruby on Rails site with 50,000 users (45,000 of which haven’t returned since the day they signed up after seeing it mentioned on TechCrunch).
Was Om Malik’s piece in Business Week? Funny…I read it in Business 2.0. Enjoy your blog.
Perfect comment, n00b. Your reply to my post is exactly what I meant.
I gaurentee you that every single person that hates MySpace has a myspace profile and checks it fairly regularly.
Doesn’t really matter if the MySpace is poorly programmed or the security sucks. The point is - it attracts users. What is the meaning of Web 2.0 anyways? Building something technologically innovative or building something that attracts a large crowd of users?
I would define Web 2.0 as building something where tons of people flock to it to the point that you’re ranked up there on Alexa…myspace and youtube did it.
It’s always very interesting to see how and where the open source innovation model evolves once a product or concept is sticky enough for a corporate backer or buyer to invest heavily into it. From a business perspective all News Corp is really doing is vertically integrating Myspace to compete for all their current partner sites’ traffic.
I created a myspace profile more than 3 years ago. After adding 3 friends, I didn’t log in again because I hate how it looks.
With all the myspace talk, I logged in again after 3 years to check how it looks. Guess what? It didn’t change a bit.
@DwarfHam
So all sites that build massive amounts of traffic are Web 2.0?
That’s a pretty poor, and in my opinion, stupid, definition.
Undoubtedly MySpace is very successful in terms of its current userbase. However, Chernin might want to cut back on some of the public arrogance. Granted, Chernin’s statements weren’t arrogant so much towards users but more so in a general sense. However, if users also start to perceive MySpace as becoming arrogant then that would be a mistake by MySpace. If anything, Chernin would be well served to see how Zuckerberg’s initial arrogance this past week with Facebook snowballed pretty quickly before Facebook did some heavy duty damage control. MySpace is in a dominant position right now but with so many sites popping up it’s really hard to say how the social networking landscape will play out down the road. Web 2.0 so heavily relies on users for content which works really well when the “viral” adoption is in high gear but a userbase can just as quickly go in the opposite direction if sentiment changes. Sure, it may not be that easy to change websites if all your friends are on MySpace but MySpace would be foolish to get so arrogant. MySpace is on top of the mountain but their place on that perch isn’t a sure thing.
Bold comments about MySpace. Hopefully NewsCorp will insist that MySpace add some structure and better talent to their engineering team and start running their operation like other successful software companies. With the addition of some legitimate talent, MySpace should be able to address the problems of scalability and reliability and ultimately provide a better service to its userbase.
I like all of the buzz flouting around all of the cool new web 2.0 companies. It’s good to see the money being pumped back into the software market.
Boris Epstein
http://www.bincsearch.com
n00b nailed it. Beautiful. This is business, people — user data tells you what you need to know.
Re n00b’s point - MySpace actually likes Web 2.0 just fine - they just want to do everything themselves, it’s the REST of Web 2.0 they don’t need.
@ Kyle
So what is your definition of “web 2.0″? Who cares if you build an almighty software or a great site that has great coding when no one is going to use it
Maybe in geek definition it’s building that almighty software but to someone in business, it’s building that next innovation that is going to attract users…the whole web 2.0 hype definition depends on who you ask
web 2.0 or whatever is only web 2.0 when VCs start funding their butts off for companies out of the blue..in hope that what they are funding will attract enough users to sell or make them money…
you can build great software and not attract as many users as “sucky coding” such as myspace which attracts alot of people
@ Marshall
I wouldn’t say that MySpace is trying to do everything themselves. Look at the deal with Snocap for music downloads, the huge deal with Google for serving ads and search. It’s not like MySpace wants to build it’s own contextual advertising network (which it could on that traffic). The difference is that MySpace is trying to bring new services to their customers, pages, and business that bring them revenue as well as delivering good experiences for their customers. Is it unreasonable to suggest that MySpace gets a cut rather than making lots of other companies successful on their shoulders?
MySpacer, that is a very fair comment to make. That same logic would justify a commercial API right? i think your comment deserves serious consideration.
The MySpace founders were a shit-eating blood-thursy asshole-spammer startup in LA. They were very smart, using PowerMTA + many random colos/dedicated servers/open relays, etc. Highly techno-unethical + hard work = ~$600 million.
This is a megacorp talking from the mouth of MySpace, now. They will fuck up whatever it was that made MySpace work. Now is the time for a competitor to strike. The MySpace backlash will start at some point, and it will likely be triggered by something slightly better (and much more stable).
Definitely the US users will move on to something newer and better, the question is only when and what percentage leave.
@n00b
Re: What they provide
The widget companies, MySpace code generaters, etc companies do provide a service to MySpace. They fill a gap in what MySpace provides. It is a mistake for MySpace to one-by-one replace and then lock-out the companies that helped build them.
What do those hundreds of shunned companies do now? They need an outlet, some new large host support and feed from, in a web 2.0 symbiotic relationship.
Maybe.
Wow Norman, I can only imagine what the private thoughts you’ve kept inside about this be.
Norman…
“They will fuck up whatever it was that made MySpace work.”
Weird, they quadrupled their size (userbase) since News Corp bought them.
“The widget companies, MySpace code generaters, etc companies do provide a service to MySpace.”
That’s absolutely right. I work for the largest myspace generator/layout companies out there and completely back the opinion that we are a major reason behind MySpace’s popularity. Providing the users a chance to make their own profile unique is what we did for MySpace and that’s a large reason why MySpace is so popular. Making people like me mad by shutting us out of giving their users tools is probably the worst thing they can do.
MySpace is full of idiots, desperadoes and advertisements.
MySpace will never have an API because they can’t program it.
People commenting on this site get far too hung up on “Web 2.0″ jargon, and nail their colours to the mast of companies that will almost certainly fail - it always happens when there’s some competition.
The MySpace haters have to realise that however long it lasts, it’s been a commercial success and a victory for the old-fashioned brand name. Let’s face it - they try to rebrand Coke, repackage it a dozen ways, but at the end of the day, most people prefer it in a plain old can.
Rather it would be like packaging coconut water in a cola can.
For some reason I am reminded of Netscape’s experiment with their homepage.
desperados, when will they come to their senses? they been out addin friends’s….
They might not need Web 2.o but what happens when it involves into Web 3.o?
It is great for webmasters.
Pakcar
For all of you arguing in favour of myspace:
There are a few people who read Shakespeare and thousands who read Mills and Boons.. what is popular need not be the best.
@ Don Wilson
“Weird, they quadrupled their size (userbase) since News Corp bought them.”
Well wasn’t a huge (if not the #1) selling point for MySpace its building inertia?
The question is when it will/has peak(ed), etc…
@ Marshall Kirkpatrick
“Wow Norman, I can only imagine what the private thoughts you’ve kept inside about this be.”
You’re comments are even more lame than my own.
What a bunch of myspace flamers
Myspace seem to have forgotten that ‘variety is the spice of life’, and by attempting to impose a ‘you can have any widget, as long as its black’ policy they’ll stifle the variety and choice that tipped them into the stratosphere in the first place.
Old world sectors such as air transportation and automobile manufacturing can’t survive without symbiotic relationships to help them reduce costs and innovate. if myspace thinks its different maybe it knows the market better than the rest of us, tho there’s no sign of it in their top 8…
This sounds like the new corporate owners needing to maximise the benefits of their new (overpriced?) acquisition before the new kids on the block come thundering up from behind.
The issue when this isolationist stuff happens is always ongoing innovation - shut out The Rest and you start to lose out, bit by bit, on new services, ideas etc so after a while your service looks old and worn……may be ok if you run a dominant ISP (AOL) or an Operating System (MSFT) before serious competition comes in, its far more risky in todays broadband always on world.
Exacerbating that is the stickiness (or not) of any of these sites, they do seem to have a lifecycle (Friendster lesson?), after a while people will go on to the next new one and the next as their lifestage changes. In the UK for example Bebo is growing fast as it is the site of choice for the next cadre of teens. Watching my kids I’d say YouTube is “it” far more than MySpace now.
Andanyway most of the people I know have several profiles anyway - MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, MSN etc, so they will not be bereft if they leave one site. You don’t “need” 300 buddies, most cyber-relationships are fairly transient anyway, and the add on services - music etc etc are same old same old.
Viral markets are feedback loops, and these work both ways….in growth, and in destruction….so w(h)ither MySpace?
AOL is/way bloated, slow, crotchety, and generally f—ed, but nonetheless tens of millions of people signed up in the 1990s, and problems aside, they’re still around.
A few people shop at Prada. Most people are fine with Walmart. Get over your snobbishness about how tacky Myspace is, so is most of American culture.
Can anyone see all this discussion mask the fact that someone like TagWorld might have a chance now. Now i know what dfj were thinking.
I love this $580M for MySpace number that’s bantied about all the time.
(in fact, it was Intermix, MySpace’s parent company that was acquired for the $580M)
From recent reports, it was revealed that the MySpace founders didn’t actually want to sell, and had to receive kickbacks to stay on board. The MySpace founders only got about $15M or so of that total amount.
Re: Web 2.0 and MySpace - n00b was actually pretty right. 99.9% of MySpace users have no clue what Web 2.0 features are and wouldn’t know what to do with them if they had them.
“Look, you can tag your friends!” and they’ll say “Ohhhhhh kay, like whatever, and I should give a sh*t becuz? LOL. see you at the rave”
@Brian
I couldn’t agree with you more. Everyone here knows that myspace is coded poorly and that it lacks a nice UI etc but thats the same reason why chain restaurants do so well. They give the mass market what they want.
Events like this certainly do demonstrate the risk of exclusively focusing on “business development 2.0″ - although bd2.0 still is an interesting meme to me.
I wonder if it has occurred to Mr. Chertin that without PhotoBucket and YouTube, MySpace might not (likely wouldn’t?) be as big as it is today. He seems sort of out of touch or arrogant. It’s a two way street. Sites that “leech” off MySpace, as he calls it, are helping MySpace to grow.
Further, I am fairly certain that YouTube and Flickr will do quite fine on their own–and that there’s a good chance MySpace would be committing suicide if they shut out all the widget developers.
I think it is very easy to say the things that he said in hindsight. One of the biggest positives that myspace has or had was the fact that they allowed all the customization. Take away the ability for a user to choose what photouploading service or any other 3rd party widget that people have grown to love and I feel that they will have serious backlash.
Josh is right in saying that sights like photobucket and youtube helped myspace grow.
@ Don,
I have always wondered about the people who made those cool layouts and icons for MySpace. Do you do it for fun? Is it a hobby? Just wondering…
Would e-mail you the question but there’s no e-mail to ask you with
I just want to reiterate:
MySpace is a nasty nasty website in appearance and function . . . .
Alot of the comments here make valid points, but I can’t help but to disagree in some regards.
Alot of people complain about MySpace’s lack of ‘beauty,’ mostly digging on its layout, color scheme, and code. It is true that the layout is lacking, but it works. In fact, third party style generators have sprung up because of that.
I have seen a few comments here about MySpace scalability, but I would love to see anyone else try to scale a site with a user base so large (and one that continues to grow so rapidly–on the order of 200,00+ users a day). I could already hear people say, ‘I can do it using LAMP.’ I will tell you right now: No you can’t. What is really surprising is the comparisons to other companies like Google, or Flickr, or Facebook. But take this into consideration: Google doesn’t have to update as frequently as MySpace, wait, neither does Flickr, heck not even Facebook. Just try to imagine how many read/writes occur in order to handle the 20+ million unique visitors a month?
The writer’s voice is really strong in this article in suggesting that MySpace is blocking external linking to flash widgets. But could there be any other reasons why they would do such a thing? Something that I have seen MySpace do very well is respond to their user base (yes, scoff, but it’s true). One of my major complaints was landing on a profile that had an embedded swf that would redirect me to some porn site. I am glad that MySpace has taken steps to stop that kind of thing. But you know, that reason doesn’t make for a juicy story.
The real kicker here is that people are questioning the quality of the developers at MySpace, but I am sure that none of them have any real idea of how MySpace works, nor what it takes to keep it working. Do I know? No. It is a black box to me. But somehow, despite its crapiness, it works for me. And you know what? It also works for a fair amount of other users here in the States, and abroad.
I know, I am going to get flamed here, but don’t get me wrong. I love ‘web 2.0′ (whatever the heck it really means no one really cares, I think), and I love services like YouTube, Digg, Flickr, and even MySpace. We all have to take our tin hats off and view things from more than one perspective.
Marshall,
Great job kicking up a lively thread! I do think that MySpace gets credit for somehow scaling their system and exiting at a great time.
In many ways they are similar to the eyeball posterchild of Web 1.0 bluemountain.com which many people thought was ugly and lame but was garnering immense market share, somehow could scale even in massive step functions (for holidays) and then was sold for $1B to Excite@Home.
The problem is they didn’t have any viable revenue stream. Have a look at where this site is now. Check the 5 year view
http://www.alexaholic.com/bluemountain.com
If there were a 7 year view it would have been closer to the top 10.
MySpace has to start putting up real revenue numbers (not wishful deal numbers) and hope that it can hold the younger demo’s attention but defensibility is rather thin. Trying to be a walled garden seems very dangerous and though YouTube has certainly benefitted from MySpace (it is reciprocal).
The other thing to remember is YouTube isn’t putting up massive revenue either.
Someone at Excite@Home once had the wisdom to say (controversial at the time): “every ecard the bluemountain sends costs us money.”
It’s the classic what came first the chicken or the egg or in this case what made myspace what it is today…. MySpace has 80+ million users. You have live with this, it’s just the fact of the matter. Whenever your on top the number one thing you have to worry about is some hackers who remind you of yourself when you built myspace……
1) Should MySpace be worried about shunning websites on the “come-up”? Yes. Hence the article and this forum.
Nobody wants to fall from the number #1 spot. I can’t blame MySpace for doing what they do. HOWEVER, I can blame them for using the market for analyzing what works and what doesn’t and CLONING it. That’s not the way to go. Without dipping into the classic 1.0 -> 2.0 debate. You have to admit.
2) Ultimately it’s the USERS who will decide who wins. Users do have a change of heart. Friendster is living proof. Currently the users choose myspace. We all have change of hearts….or do we?
If you read anything from my post let it be: 50,000+ techcruch readers/programmers don’t decide who wins in this industry. The USERS do. We just give them the tools to interact.
MySpace was the BEST TO DO IT in the social community space to date. Hate it or love it. Respect it or don’t. My advice is to ENJOY it all. It’s the internet gold rush all over again.
We’re all making money doing something we LOVE. Welcome competition and innovation……
At one point that 80+ million spent their time on AOL all day long. I think its foolish to think these people aren’t fickle enough to go someplace else.
I love myspace, but the we have punch of egomanic running myspace now. I hope they don’t wreck the brand, however they have started. One thing I find annoying is them running all these Fox Media promtion junk on the homepage for instance when they were promoting of X-men and The Simpson. Who cares about the x-men and the Simpson!! They could be a little more subtle. One more thing Mr. Chertin shut your mouth. The less you talk the better for the company.
It will be interesting to watch the web 2.0 pan out. I have started trying to find an answer to what will happen when the craze is over. It will be quite a ride until then though.
All I can say is companies entering this market better have their business plan together.
I totally agree with Chris (post #16). I think there are two fatal flaws in MySpace (well, at least two)
1. MySpace has no control over its own “customers”, i.e. the members. MySpace does nothing to engage or entertain its users, that responsibility is left totally up to desperate 40 yr old women, and Mall Rats. With this scenario, all of the power is in the hands of the user, VERY DANGEROUS. I too have stopped using my MySpace account because there is nothing on the site I need to invest time in. A good newspaper or TV show ENTERTAINS people on a consistent basis, and therefore a relationship is born. There is currently no relationship between MySpace and its users. They do not connect in any way whatsoever. Facebook had some semblance of that in their “Hey! We’re college only! Aren’t we cool” mentality, but that too seems to be going the way of the Do-Do as they seem forced to open up FBK to businesses and non-students. Such a shame.
2. SocNet usage is evolving and because MySpace has no relationship with its users, they are about to be blindsided. Face the facts, when people first got profiles they spent all their time searching for old friends or hot people. Sending messages, looking at new profiles etc etc. Now all of the time is spend updating users OWN profiles. The funny thing is, all this time and effort goes unnoticed by their friends because everyone is so obsessed with themselves in the MySpace world. Honestly I have not looked at a friend’s profile in 4 months, however I do still send and receive messages almost daily. however all I do is use my inbox and hit “reply” so now my subject headers read like
“Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: Hey!”
CG said: MySpace has no control over its own “customers”
Really? Ever heard of the network effect. Bands and merchants are there because it is where their customers are. They are locked in by their networks of “friends”
Web 2.0 is all a fraction in comparison to the traffic and revenue generated by myspace.
This blog has 100,000 subscribers, all from essential the same demographic, myspace has most of those 100,000 people and millions more.
Like the design or not, they are the dominant force in web 2.0, not some free AJAX crap.
Agree with Garth above, the only reason myspace is popular is because it really is “my-space”. If i stay in the boundries, i can do whatever i like and i dont need big daddy tellling me what i can do and what i can’t. MySpace has revolutionized what every other dating website has been trying and given it their own spin. Look at the disaster called friendster, why did it go down? It was very boring, create a stupid profile and thats it… but i heard they are catching up now…
Let’s have a look at myspace:
1. it is not clear on its user policy
I registered more than 20 accounts and, well, I dont use any of them.
Many of my profiles are just emtpy or say “MySpace is Stupid”…
Well, let this statement be a fictional one, but get the point.
2. Most of the users of MySpace are neither willing to pay attention for advertisement, nor are they reallly going to believe to “Network”. all this page does is syndicate and giving a surface in which imaginary neworks can be formed.
3. Saying that it really does not care about Web 2.0 (which is itself quite alright), it directly declares that it has no interest in change and adjustment/obedience to market dictatorship.
This page has not shown any innovation or any will to be flexible and open for new things, it has not ever prepped up the GUI and yes,
being a gigantic bubble of trash, it will most probably not make it past the 3 months after every user has entered, enjoyed the illusion and finally got sick of it.
This thing works because there is many people in there and it attracts many people. The less smart people are, the longer they will cherish the illusion that this network was real.
It is a less efficient way to get at information and networks than the phone book and the web search is. It is a hype.
And not looking forward will break this companies neck.
Thus I rather do not take tis statement serious
Another one concerning myspace
well, looking at web 2.0 no service is what it should be. Microsfot live is too unpersonal, it has no ability to self-organizie specific traits, it has not the clear idea of who it wants to adress with live spaces. The content I can placeon it is mere rubbish I just do not want to take on.
Google has a stupid interface and all other service are nice to deal with, hype and die with.
The overall concept of Web 2.0 which means a direct differentiation between branding by form/interface and image, and the actual content and ways of content being placed in the overall interface is what this is about. Saying no to this can only be the result of not understanding the movemen,t not understand what is to be achieved, not understanding at all what one does in the own hype.
The first network that got me use blogs like MS Spaces, do profiles like MySpace, connect to collegues like in more limited networking sites, a site that allows me to post pictures for profile, contest (like hotornot.com), showcase (flickr) purposes, the network that got me aggregated RSS feeds and auto-selects the best on each topic and the best to each section (Finance etc) in a well-defined surface giving me the look of a Newspaper, allowing me to comment on articles, send articlelinks and comment-forum-links to friends, and got me overall directly connect articles with issues with blogs with discussions with email with new articles it reallly does not make a difference. and well, i rather saw amazon’s face nitegrated into MS live than I saw its own version, and I rahte rhad ebay doing the work that MS shop and buy or whatever it is does.
I definitely do not want Microsoft spaces, and I do not want Google Video or Apple Videocast.
I want not only entertainment and the illusion of being a part. I want information, and once the informaiton allows me to make money I will start to like the site I am seeing. MySpace is for porn starts, musicians. No network allows me to directly view experts informaton on current trends and see their actions…Looking for Finanical Times information on the falling il prices, then seeing a discussion on why it falls, and having the opportunity to scout that man that really seems to know what he is taling about and then finally not having his profiles with a history of blog entries, portfeuilles and an overall overview over what tis person does and who he hangs with I will not waste my time on myspace.
Web 2.0 for now is nothing but another passive media which creates awareness of things. It has the opportunity to become a meta-market in which transactions are being organized and realised. It is not yet so.
Having tons of members, MySpace rather would concentrate on the overall picture and ask itself how it actually could intervene in the progress of social networking and how it really brings success to its customers. THen that is what myspace should be about.
And as long as I network with someone I will never know it is nothnig but the idea of knowing someone. An artists being loved and commented by so many fellows, will not have any profit, for nobody will buy anything from this person unless he was in the TV or radio. This is the case with all totally inclusive Media which do not deal with the actual processes of networking and its social and psychological means. MySpace does none of this.
yes garth, in a sense MySpace has no control over its users. They implement new things (Like IM, Classifieds, etc) yet no one uses them. People create bogus accounts at will. Try searching for George Bush, Bubb Rubb, etc and you get pages and pages of profiles.
Of course bands and merchants are there! MySpace claims 110million “members” but how many of these members are active, or even real? How many of them view or interact with these web advertisements?
They cannot get users to act on the advertising as evidenced by the low CPMs, and quality of their ads. How many more times do I have to watch Arnold Schwartznegger vs. George Bush climb a ladder?
What point is getting a bulletin from a band when you don’t notice it on your page because some girl has sent you 35 bulletins in the last 35 hours, and the valuable ones get lost in the shuffle?
MySpace: A place for getting unsolicited friend requests from strippers!
“MySpace-Critic” made some good points, but don’t view me as a MySpace basher, I just think they do some things wrong. They’ve obviously figured out how to generate a Press/PR Machine to the tune of millions of users.
DwarfHam, started off as a way to help people because we enjoyed myspace so much. Now it’s turned into a (very) successful business.
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