July 2006. My MySpace was pretty cool. I spent some time figuring out HTML and a great background image! I was so cool … Until my stupid brother hacked it and turned it entirely homosexual. Sounds funny and it was. Remember MySpace when it first began in 03? Very different.
In July 2005 MySpace was bought for $ 580 mil. by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Turned out to be a good investment for Murdoch, on August 8, 2006, search engine Google signed a $ 900 mil. deal to provide a Google search facility and advertising on MySpace. Since they just made $ 900 mil. now they're just "floating" is only the beginning of my theory. It's losing any personal feel it had since the Murdoch's Fox interception. Being in and around bands locally and nationally, the music side of MySpace prevails or it has floated into this situation. As far as my account or personal accounts in general, its numbers have been declining for far over a year. MySpace has officially lost its title as "online social media king" in mid '08. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in an actual attempt to overthrow the crown. He succeeded. June 2008 stats- Facebook – 116.4 million unique users to MySpace's 115.7 million.
November 2008 Facebook became more than twice the size of MySpace. Lets not discuss the more recent Twitter. Even Bebo has eaten away at the numbers, all three downright retrieving MySpaces users for itself. First question: In the family of social media, how does the founding father (MySpace / Friendster) be bullied into the backseat? Although Rupert Murdoch intends on keeping it, a lot has to go down for MySpace to come back up or even compete according to the numbers. Several finding developers have walked away, Tom Anderson is on payroll (his contract expired in October. MySpace has had its hands in almost everything. From funding movies, music, streaming video, classifieds, polls, news, MySpaceTV and not mentioning it's shameless advertisements your bombarded with on the site. In an interview at Guardian.co.uk Tom admitted Murdock's aim is to capitalize on streaming video. He also stated that the team asks a lot of "will this work?"
Another cheap and unprofessional move was the adoption of "Captcha" codes. What a lazy way to deal the impending spam problem plaguing the site. My theory: MySpace has had it's day, it has become an inevitable music site. The music is free there and independent music depends on it. Murdoch has more than made his money back, and billionaires who have long time rivalry with other billionaires (CNN's Ted Turner) would rather win the pissing match than RE-build a losing internet social site. His entire life has been media, specifically news. Paper's and newscast's are his HOME, he will return to that once a certain line is crossed with MySpace. Once Tom Anderson and Cris Dewolfe have had enough of fighting the uphill battle, they will settle with the "online music" plan that MySpace IS becoming, or they will not continue with MySpace. After all, Tom suggests that Murdock got a major deal at $ 580 mil.! I'd be sore if I sold out for that and months later the company made $ 900 Mil. with a Google deal. The pair alone could create something from the ground up and are dealing with more frustration than ever before.
Most of the original team is split up anyways. If the ad revenue continues I'm sure it's a keeper nonetheless, but I feel these people are used to making hundreds of millions. If users continue to leave the website for others alike, there will be no ad revenue. I see few options for MySpace. And in a year or two we will see how my theory of it's future prevails. For now I'll stick with HetweetShetweet.com and other popular twitter add on sites. This way I can maximize my Twitter traffic. Plain and simple, the new social networks let you network without malicious ad placement or strict max usage rules.
