October 27th, 2006
Will MySpace and Facebook Be Victims of Their Own Success?
I wondered about a MySpace downturn back in May — I may well have been just flat wrong — or maybe I was just premature. An article in the WSJ looks at the problem of MySpace and Facebook becoming overcrowded and too full of commercial messages:
“good bye myspace.
I’ve always hated you.
I just never had what it took
to leave”
Ms. Thompson belongs to a fringe of Internet users now renouncing MySpace and other social-networking sites — not in spite of their popularity, but because of it. That highlights a dilemma facing News Corp.’s MySpace and Facebook Inc.: While it takes a critical mass of users to make these sites work, having too many users alienates some, especially when they attract an ever-growing cacophony of advertising and in some cases, spam.
There’s nothing new about these observations, and it’s still not clear whether this is just minor ongoing churn or the tip of the iceberg. The article cites Nielsen/NetRatings data that shows traffic drop-off, but it’s written off as seasonal.
The article also cites a growing spam problem:
There’s no question, however, that MySpace’s recent popularity has brought with it a proliferation of spam that has annoyed some users. Many advertisers take advantage of the “friend request” function and send out requests that are really just advertisements. And programs have cropped up that can automatically send mass friend requests to MySpace users — in short, a new generation of email spam. Sites with names like FriendBot.com and FriendAdder.com sell the programs starting at $19.95.
I think the real question is whether the success of the MySpace and Facebook brands will allow them to maintain their dominant positions, or whether going mainstream will ultimately ruin their appeal for the hip digital generation.
Last year the trend to watch was social networking. This year it was online video. Next year one of the big trends to watch will be whether the dominant brands have staying power.
Topics: Facebook | MySpace | Social Media | Social Networking
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You were definitely ahead of the curve here Scott
I think there is an size limit that any participatory media/online community effort faces and maybe, just maybe some of these services are reaching their’s respectively.
A great related read: http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
The one thing that will create the demise of myspace and facebook is the fact that soon enough there will be no such thing as privacy. You will be a public figure and if anyone can find you then you wont really be able to hide from anyone. I can see at one point that even bill collectors and creditors are going to start their own myspace to track down people. Of course myspace lets you feel a bit safer by allowing your profile to be private or the only way to add a friend is if you know their last name or email address. However how reliable is that? You still have friends that already have you in their top 4/8/12/16/20/24 so are you really free from the eight degrees of separation? For example I dont even use my real name in my MySpace because I dont want certain people finding but a few exgirlfriends have found me through friends that had me on their top whatever. Myspace is becoming more MyStalkerSpace in addition to validating our mothers when they say that the youth of today are more zombies than anything else. What ever happened to going out? what happened to cruising on the boulevard and going to the “meet up spot”? Sites that are coming up are kicking people in the right direction, sites like MatchActivity let you put up activities so that you can actually go outside, get a tan, enjoy the sunlight with someone with an actual common interest. Instead of becoming “friends” with webcam models why not become friends with someone who likes hiking or going to the pier? Have we become so desensitized by the computer that we are scared of actual interactions?
“Neither MySpace nor Facebook will disclose the number of people who have deleted their pages, but a MySpace spokeswoman offers that there has been “absolutely no increase in the rate of deletions.”" - WSJ
Maybe so, but interestingly today on Myspace members are seeing a message that reads in part: are you one of the people whose maibox count is messed up? your mail page shows something like “1 of 3″ messages and you don’t see messages?
it’s because the user who sent you the mail has deleted their profile, or because they were a spammer that we blocked and deleted. you should now be able to delete the messages from deleted users and fix your mail counts.
So while the spokespersons might want to hose down the issue of spam and deletions, there’s enough of a problem for page owners to be alerted to it.
If You Can’t Tell Whether Something Is An Ad, That’s Deception 4 days 20 hours old Can I Please Blog Your Private Meeting? 5 days 23 hours old Is Audience Measurement Still Relevant? 1 week 1 day old Will MySpace and Facebook Be Victims of Their Own Success? 1 week 1 day old