With all the talk of Twitter and Facebook slowly taking over the world, we’ve all seemed to forget about MySpace. Many of us don’t even equate MySpace with social networking as we once did. It seems as though MySpace is now just a place for musicians and advertisements.
During the past six months, MySpace activity has dropped significantly. According to Mashable.com, MySpace’s U.S. traffic dropped from 55.6 million unique visitors in August to 50.2 million in September. Wow. That’s more than five million users in one month.
MySpace is in a downward, accelerating spiral. It’s losing millions and millions of dollars for News Corp., not to mention three executives and countless staff layoffs the past few months. MySpace is losing users like, whoa.
Where’d they all go?
To Facebook and Twitter.
Now, Facebook has taken the lead among social networking sites. Twitter is rapidly gaining on MySpace. According to the comScore report, Twitter has grown by close to 50 percent from April to September. Facebook’s 50 million user lead has grown to 75 million over the summer.
So what does this mean for MySpace? Is it just being left in the dust?
MySpace has redirected their goals. It is trying to refocus the site by appealing to specific entertainment-driven audiences. While MySpace has always seemed to be a good place for musicians to go, it’s now aiming to be the best place.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “In a strategy shift, MySpace is striving to become an online hangout for people to connect with friends over entertainment content…MySpace says ramping up its technology initiatives to create new products that let users share such content with friends is an essential part of its strategy.”
I think MySpace has to do quite a bit more than just that to regain users. MySpace has turned into a feeding ground for advertisers and spammers. If MySpace is serious about being all things entertainment, the site will need a total revamp to legitimately compete with other music/entertainment sites like Pandora, Blip.fm and even YouTube.
I suppose only time can determine MySpace’s ultimate fate in the cyberworld.
2 Comments
MySpace’s challenges don’t end there. 2010 brings about the end of their ad distribution deal with Google. This is a huge stream of revenue that will be drastically reduced:
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090217/myspaces-google-gravy-train-set-to-stop-next-year/
Some think it is just a matter of a few years before Facebook and Twitter are in the same boat. What is Twitter doing to generate revenue? How long before someone posts something on Facebook that gets them killed and everyone stops using Facebook. Very few things survive for long on the Internet.