Blog Home 16th March, 2010

Social Media School: Can MySpace Make it Back? We'd like you to weigh in.

School Study Topic: Former social media superpower MySpace started losing ground to Facebook in 2008. Since then, Facebook has gone from strength to strength. Can MySpace return to relevance?

For most of us, our MySpace accounts were our first real foray into that amalgam called social media. Most of us also have Facebook accounts by now. However, once people make the leap over to Facebook, how many still maintain their MySpace accounts? “I haven’t deleted my MySpace account simply due to inertia; it simply isn’t a high priority.” Says a Miami Ad School alumnus--who would like to remain anonymous--principal of a social media consulting firm, “I haven’t accessed the account in over a year. However, I’m logged into Facebook 24/7.”

Facebook has become the acknowledged social media leader. The numbers tell the story: in February Facebook had 111.8 million visitors, up 95% from last year. That’s in the the U.S. alone. During the same period, MySpace had 66.7 million visitors, down 5%. MySpace has been taken to school by the upstart.

Of course, major brand advertisers have taken note. Market research firm eMarketer forecasts that worldwide social media ad spending with Facebook will reach US$605 million this year, an increase of 39% from last year. If that comes to pass, Facebook will itself surpass MySpace which, if predictions hold, will see revenues reduced by US$385 or 21%. Ouch.

In light of these dire predictions, MySpace is planning to “return to it’s roots” by focusing on entertainment. While doing so, however, they are incorporating Facebook-like features such as “Stream” which will be akin to the FB’s News Feed.

Get the whole story at the Los Angeles Times. What do you think? Will this be successful? Can MySpace return to its roots and stay relevant? Are those roots actually “entertainment” or is that not even true?

Think of this as a school discussion group. What do you think?

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Showing 1 - 5 - 5 comments
  • mandy
    I think myspace is going to make a comeback. When this whole thing started I was a member of friendster and soon joined MySpace. I refuse to join FB because of all the drama that revolves around it. Loved ones fighting, behind the scenes stalking and hating. Seems a little less apparent in the myspace scene. Everyone has jumped to FB but I refuse to make an account. There seems to be no privacy. Also I do quite enjoy redesigning my myspace, you can really get creative! Long live myspace!
    March 23rd 2010
  • Emiliano Martinez Rivera
    I never liked MySpace, it has been awful since day one. I think I made an account because of an insisting friend and visited it like once a year. It gave me headaches!!. Every page, no matter the user nor style, would look cluttered. I know many of you are thinking that the aesthetics depends on each user customization but I think there's a big issue on the base layout. In my humble opinion, they can get more viral if they re-design the layout and take a bit of design control.
    March 21st 2010
  • David Steinberg
    The internet got more sophisticated and is now mature. Myspace is not user friendly and feels at least for me obsolete. They missed their upgrade many years ago. Customizing your myspace page isn't cool anymore. If they shut their doors tomorrow no one really cares. It's like the Google vs Yahoo discussion.
    March 18th 2010
  • Andrew Chrysostom
    Without leaving an essay : this all brings about a really interesting debate, how do you change the online habits of the consumer? Google, Facebook, Skype etc. are all online services which have competitors, that just don't make the grade for no concrete reason (putting aside Bing's inadequacies). The problem with these powerhouses in social media is that all their friends are on the site, meaning there isn't a decent reason why the consumer changing would ever think that it would be easy to change. Unless Myspace poaches a m***ive proportion of casual facebook users, they don't stand a change of making a financially viable comeback. With Youtube providing Video, Spotify providing Music, Facebook providing casual contact and Google providing a good search engine all to a very good, user friendly degree - there's little room for anything else to break the monopoly.
    March 18th 2010
  • Anthony
    I personally started out with a Friendster account, which is still popular amongst people in parts of the Asian continent. I once referred someone living in Southeast Asia to try MySpace out and she would sign on here and there, but never really stayed dedicated enough to it to sign on daily or even weekly. For my friend, it may have very well been a consumer habit of sticking to what she is use to. The days of "So what's your MySpace" and the social networking site appearing in the media and song lyrics have dwindled. When you visit a website, they will more than likely have a FOLLOW US ON TWITTER & FACEBOOK. If you share a family computer, you will also know that your time online may be shortened, because your mother and 14-year-old sister are checking their Facebook messages, applying to groups, making new friends and countless other things. It was only a matter of time though, because many people simply have grown bored with MySpace. The number of visitors were not the only thing that declined, but the quality as well. I personally started to visit less and less when I would get countless friend invites and messages from spam bots. I didn't want to, but I had to put restrictions on friend invites. It was then only a matter of time before friends of mine had their comment section bombarded with facts on marijuana or links to sites that provide free Sears cards. Sure, something so big was bound to be a target of such things, but it felt as though the owners were away counting their dollars and took too long to act or make improvements to the site. The population shrank and I, personally, began seeing a decline in people competing to have 1,000+ comments for a certain photo or indulging in some self-pride after adding 35 friends in one night, which they may never meet or probably never send a personalized message to. I personally maintain my MySpace page once every couple months, but am sometimes visiting less than that only because I will have an Inbox full of messages and comments asking why I haven't jumped to Facebook yet or I will see a page or two from a good friend deleted or I will simply be signing on for nothing. Many of my friends may have not signed in for months or when they do sign in they say it is for a minute or two and they were unable to reply to me. At this point, many have had a taste of MySpace and see Facebook as an offering to a more mature market and those that want an advancement in social networking -- those people have been there and done that -- Facebook is probably the first social networking site for many others and will more than likely be their last. MySpace should not be concerned in trying to win back their visitors and members, but should be more focused on taking the necessary steps to brand themselves differently and offer something unique to MySpace that one cannot log onto Facebook or Friendster for. If it cannot, then what does it have to come back to? What does it have to live for?
    March 17th 2010
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