The social Web space is abuzz with new developments and entrants these days. Facebook's IPO. The explosion of Pinterest. The rapid evolution of Google+ into a place where the President of the United States hangs out. One name you never hear is one that was all the rage just a few years ago.
MySpace has been losing traffic since 2008, when Facebook first surpassed it on Alexa. Last year, the company was sold for $35 million by News Corporation, who bought it for $580 million six years earlier. Its new owners, Specific Media, have tried to reposition the site as an online entertainment hub rather than a full-fledged social network. If early numbers are any indication, the refocus appears to be working.
When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone five years ago, it was a happy day for the Apple faithful. Less so for the folks at Palm, whose employer became a ticking time bomb. In one move, Apple leapfrogged its rivals in hardware and software and changed the mobile industry forever. And Palm -- a touch computing pioneer that lost its way -- was toast.
That's just one example of how quickly a company's fates can change in today's fast-moving tech industry. Every company -- even those as seemingly strong today as Apple and Google -- have clear risks and weaknesses. The iPad could drive Microsoft's decline. The government could smother Google's growth efforts. And a mobile player that doesn't even exist could be the one that takes down Facebook.
In a new study released today, Pew Internet Research found that 66 percent of American adults online use Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. They cite staying in touch with family and friends as one of the major reasons for using these sites. Seventy-one percent of the younger demographic, ages 18-29, cites staying in touch with current friends as a major reason for using social networks. Fifty-five percent of users ages 30-49 are on social networking sites to connect with old friends they'd lost touch with.
We posted last year about the prevalence of cyberbullying on social networks. The longer-term consequences of that are just now finding their way into our legal system, and this week the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case of Doninger v. Niehoff, which was the case involving a high school junior girl named Avery Doninger. Back in 2007, she criticized school officials for not allowing a student concert, and said on her LiveJournal blog that the "douchebags in central office" had cancelled the event. Niehoff was the principal, and was granted "qualified immunity" from Doninger's suit. This is the part of the law that shield's public officials from legal liability when there is no clear case law. By not hearing the appeal, this decision of qualified immunity stands.
When the site relaunches later this year, former social networking heavyweight MySpace will aim to reclaim the position it once held as a preeminent hub for music.
MySpace went through several attempts to reinvent itself before being sold by News Corp in June. Its new marketing head Al Dejewski told Ad Age the company will shift its focus more intently on music and try to compete against the likes of Spotify and iTunes, .
Facebook is now "getting serious about music and media," writes Om Malik on GigaOm.com, revealing unannounced details regarding the social network's new ambition to be a place to discover music with friends. The deal involves partnerships with the internationally popular music streaming service Spotify, and possibly other music services, too, currently in talks with Facebook.
Sharing music with friends? Sounds like the final death knell for MySpace, doesn't it?
NPR music podcast All Songs Considered just released a show about breaking up with your favorite bands. It got me thinking about favorite web apps or services that I've broken up with. So in the tradition of Internet era music, I'm going to directly rip NPR's idea and breakup categories.
In this post I tearfully discuss past relationships with MySpace, Last.fm and Soup.io. I finish with a love story that has a happier ending: Flickr. I'd love to hear your own tales of web app woe in the comments.
The death knells of the first generation of social media platforms continue. A day after Friendster announced that it would be deleting photos and blog posts from its platform, reports surface that News Corp is selling off Myspace and is starting the bidding at $100 million.
News Corp bought the one-time social media titan in 2005 for $580 million and it has been bleeding money for several years. The move by News Corp to accept bids is akin to a sports franchise that tries to trade an underperforming player to get some nominal value before it has to just cut its losses and release him from the team.
Companies used to pay millions of dollars to splash advertisements on the front page of MySpace, back when that social network was the hottest one on the web. One of the people in charge of selling those ads was Rita Garg, a Stanford and Harvard educated mathematician and economist.
Today Garg announced, in a Tweet, that she's left MySpace and is now working on business development at Twitter Inc. Twitter keeps scooping up the leaders from other giant tech companies, ReadWriteWeb reported first last month that Bing chief scientist Alek Kołcz left Microsoft to join Twitter as well. That sounds like as good a use of the company's coffers filled with venture capital as any.
It's done. The battle between Facebook and Myspace is finally over. Yesterday, the two companies made a joint announcement introducing "Mashup with Facebook", a feature that brings all of your Facebook "likes" and interests to Myspace by way of Facebook Connect.
We can't help but wonder if this announcement marks the end of an era or the beginning of a new one for the once-dominant social network, and we're looking to you, our readers, to find out.
