The company ushered Tom out the door today from President into an advisory role is in talks with Tom about a new role if he leaves his post as President, and replaced its CEO with former Facebook business exec Owen Van Natta. Increased revenue isn't really what MySpace needs, if it's to stay strong it needs to stop bleeding users. That's not likely.

Those are all relatively daring, smart ideas. But, none of them will work. That's ok, MySpace was an important part of the social web's early history. Its time has passed, though.

MySpace is an embarrassment for most people on the web. Many people feel like it's a bratty kid sister wearing too little clothing. Danah boyd famously wrote in 2007 that the MySpace/Facebook split was largely about economic class. That may not be so true anymore. (See boyd's response in an update below.) Give most people another option and they are going to choose it. Social networking used to be just for teenagers, but those kids are growing up and everyone else is joining in the activity. Not on MySpace, though.

MySpace's core nature is to express yourself into a void and hope people come to visit your page and check it out. The relatively recent additions of status updates and news feeds feel tacked on and superficial. MySpace clearly hoped that many of its users would write long-form blog posts but the time investment required to use that feature is much more arduous than the quick and easy publishing on Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook and Twitter may or may not stick around longer than MySpace has. MySpace will probably always be able to serve a sizable constituency in between children and adults. But, the momentum has left MySpace and churn in this market will probably keep Facebook from holding on to it for more than a few years as well.

None of this is news, MySpace went cold quite awhile ago. Tom hasn't updated his status message in a week and a half. He knows what's going on. Putting a business guy from Facebook in charge just makes it official.

Update: MySpace Communications emailed after this post was written to let us know that Tom updated his status message today after all, and that going a week and a half is nothing unusual for him. Point taken.

Update: Microsoft's danah boyd sent us this response. "As for now, the 20-something MySpace crowd is using Twitter but the teen crowd is not. (Many of the 20-somethings even point to their MySpace profile as their URL in Twitter.) There is still a strong divide amongst the teens regarding MySpace and Facebook. MySpace is not dead among many teens (and it still comes up in my fieldwork... last set of interviews with teens being a month ago). Given what I've seen from this crowd and their attitudes towards those who use Facebook, I don't expect there to be a switch to Facebook any time soon. That said, there is always the possibility of something new that does not have so much baggage. I've been waiting for the "next thing" for this crowd but I haven't seen it yet."

"Web users, and particularly small businesses, don't just want an online presence (which was Geocities key value proposition), they want a professional-looking site that they can quickly and affordably build, and the tools to help themselves and/or their businesses succeed (online marketing, commerce capabilities, etc.) - and that's what we're about."

Example Yola website

However, the same argument can be turned back on his business and others like it such as Weebly (a Y Combinator company), Sampa (our coverage), SiteKreator and Webon (owned by another Web 1.0 survivor, Lycos). The online presence that people and small businesses want is increasingly being provided by both web hosting companies and large Internet behemoths like Yahoo! and Google. Google has Google Sites, which evolved out of one of Google's acquisitions, JotSpot, and is available for free both as a standalone product and as a part of Google Apps.

Not to mention, there are free blogging platforms such as Wordpress.com and Google's Blogger. Easy-to-use lifestreaming tools such as Tumblr and Soup.io are also filling many peoples website needs. Yet another type of 'free website' is a DIY social network like Ning.

However, as we noted in our round-up post last year, services such as Yola do target a specific type of user. They're aimed at people who just want a regular website, for example, people who want to chronicle their wedding or holiday, families who want to track their family history and growth, or retailers who want to build a web presence.

As the chart below shows, there's still a long way for Yola and Weebly, which appear to be the two frontrunners in this market, to catch up with GeoCities. But, it will be interesting to see how many new users they pick up now that GeoCities has dropped out.

Google Sites and the free websites provided by web hosting companies tend to be bland and not very customizable. Yola and the like are obviously hoping there is a big enough market for people to want a more professional looking and stylish web presence. So the 'add-on' premium service model probably does have legs. Weebly is also using the affiliate model, so it hasn't eschewed advertising completely.

As we noted a year ago, website builder platforms in the web 2.0 era, where mashups and open data are common, typically offer ways to integrate with 3rd party apps. This can take the form of widgets, or even utilizing other sites' APIs. This is probably the biggest difference between GeoCities 1.0 and the 2.0 era web publishing platforms. These platforms also usually offer the ability to add blogs, RSS feeds, multimedia, privacy controls, and more. For example, Webon supports the OpenSocial API "for thousands of add-ons and widgets (such as iGoogle gadgets and Google FriendConnect), with no HTML or CSS knowledge needed, as well as OpenID to enable DIY social network connections."

Another common feature in the new website creation tools is use of Ajax to build sites. They often have rich functionality and the ability to drag n' drop ajax widgets.

We think Yola, Weebly, and others have a good business model. Although, we also think it's a crowded niche market, even without GeoCities, and some of these startups will inevitably fall by the wayside. For most people, the basic service that Google Sites or web hosting companies provide will be 'good enough'. So, Weebly, Yola, and others are scrapping for the small percentage of users who want a premium quality website.

Market Players

Geocities itself is still active in the website creation market. Here are some of its competitors:

• Google Sites (it evolved out of one of Google's acquisitions, JotSpot, and is now available for free separately from Google Apps)
• Weebly (a Y Combinator company)
• SynthaSite (our coverage)
• Sampa (our coverage)
• SiteKreator
• Webon (a recently launched offering from Web 1.0 stalwart Lycos)

Who's using these products? Website creation platforms are aimed at people who just want a regular website; for example people who want to chronicle their wedding or holiday, families who want to track their family history and growth, or retailers who want to build a web presence.

Often these tools have 'drag and drop' functionality, so you can create a new website in a matter of hours without needing to know HTML or have particular design skills. Lycos told us that their product Webon is "geared toward more casual users, e.g. parents, travelers, shutterbugs, who want more control and a more stylized web presence than typical blogging tools or social network profiles allow for."

Note that you could argue that DIY social networks like Ning are competing in this space, although Ning co-founder Marc Andreessen thinks otherwise. I'm inclined to agree with him, because social networks, blogs, wikis, and websites are all different beasts.

Social Web Twist

Website builder platforms in the web 2.0 era, where mashups and open data are common, typically offer ways to integrate with 3rd party apps. This can take the form of widgets, or even utilizing other sites' APIs. This is probably the biggest difference between Geocities 1.0 and the 2.0 era web publishing platforms. But also these platforms usually offer the ability to add blogs, RSS feeds, multimedia, privacy controls, and more.

Google Sites diagram, from their homepage

As an example of what these products now offer, Lycos told us recently that Webon supports the OpenSocial API "for thousands of add-ons and widgets (such as iGoogle gadgets and Google FriendConnect), with no HTML or CSS knowledge needed, as well as OpenID to enable DIY social network connections."

Another common feature in the new website creation tools is use of Ajax to build sites. While at the Web 2.0 Expo a couple of months ago, I dropped by the SynthaSite booth and was very impressed with the rich functionality and the ability to drag n' drop ajax widgets.

Who's Leading This Market?

Geocities and Google Sites have the biggest presence, simply because of their bigco backing. Among the startups, according to stats from Compete, the leading small co is Weebly with SynthaSite showing positive growth.

Conclusion

An old cliche that Web entrepreneurs often wheel out at press time is that the market pie (for whatever segment they're in) is only getting bigger, so there's plenty of room for them and their competitors too. Well in the case of website creation tools, that's certainly true! One of the primary characteristics of the social web - aka web 2.0 - is that anyone can easily publish content to the Web. So there is a lot more need these days, compared to the 90's, for web publishing platforms of all varieties. Many RWW readers probably use blogging and/or social network tools, and micro-publishing tools like Twitter and FriendFeed. But for many other people, straight website creation tools - like Geocities and its many competitors - fit their needs better.

To finish, here's a brain teaser for you: what will Geocities 3.0 look like? ;-)