The Washington Post has a story about youngsters leaving MySpace in droves that recently hit the front page of digg. And the WSJ agrees with a spookily similar story. Hang on. I recall reading another remarkably similar story four months ago [digg link — the newspaper has moved the piece].
I think these stories are largely based on tenets gleaned from wishful thinking and accepted wisdom, plumped up with an anecdote or two:
(a) big, successful things are bound to fail sooner or later;
(b) teens are so fickle, always looking for the next big thing.
MySpace usage ramped up heavily during its first year and a half, hitting 2 hours and 25 minutes in October last year. Then it dropped to about 2 hours and held relatively steady there for the past year. Facebook, a younger networking site, is still on a gradual incline, reaching 1 hour and 9 minutes last month. […]
Right, so setting up your MySpace profile is quite time-consuming. Maintaining it is not.
“They’re not loyal,” Ben Bajarin, a market analyst for Creative Strategies Inc., said of the youth demographic. Young audiences search for innovative and new features. They’re constantly looking for new ways to communicate and share content they find or create, and because of that group mentality, friends shift from service to service in blocs.
Not exactly scientific, eh? nor is the remaining ‘evidence’. Personally, I think a lot of journalists and media analysts are the ones always looking for the next big thing. Valleywag seems to agree.
Madeline Dell’Aria, another high school junior, has fallen in and out of love with a number of sites. In middle school she started avidly blogging on Xanga. Last year, after most of her friends abandoned Xanga and migrated to MySpace, she followed. “No one was using Xanga anymore,” she said.
Initially, MySpace drew her in, and she spent lots of time looking at her friend’s photos or leaving comments on their pages, she said. Now, only a year or so later, ennui is setting in. She spends a lot less time on the site, instead listening to music or talking on the phone, she said. […]
So it’s become one among a number of communications media used by this person. No real surprises there. The MySpace spokeswoman seems to offer some conflicting information:
“There will always be anecdotes of people that love MySpace and people that don’t,” a spokeswoman for the site said, but the site is adding an average of 320,000 new profiles every day and continuing to go mainstream. In the past year it launched new services such as mobile and video channels, and expanded internationally.
This is what I think. MySpace remains massive, ten times bigger than any competing network. At the same time, there is a lot of churn –the 100mn+ profiles on the system are nowhere near all in use. A lot of them might have been created by curious adults, for example. Others belong to users who have migrated elsewhere but haven’t deleted their profiles, perhaps because they still use MySpace for music and for certain friends.
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A quote from that article:
“A note on the group’s page reads, ‘Facebook just opened its doors to everyone on the internet. That means your mom, your boss, and every stalker in the world can now make an account.’”
I love the logic there: because “your mom, your boss, and every stalker in the world” didn’t go to college and couldn’t get on facebook before. If someone is a stalker (college or not) and couldn’t get onto facebook before, they’re not a very good stalker, are they?
And for that matter, what is the logic behind the assumption that someone you meet at a party, or in class, or who goes to your school, is somehow LESS likely to be a “stalker” than anyone else?
Rick
I agree with Rick. Just because someone didn’t go to college or no longer has to claim to go to college… doesn’t determine the likelihood of them being a stalker… or your mom.
http://www.stareclips.com/?myspace-stalkers
My understanding is that nearly all rapes, kidnappings, beatings, and other unpleasantness are done by people you know rather than strangers. The MySpace stalker thing is a straw man.
Great post — nice to see the sceptics called on their scepticism. When we predicted that Bebo would overtake MySpace in the UK we pointed out that it is not a zero sum game. People will use different profiles for different things. In the UK, MySpace is very much about music. It is very difficult to be all things to all people. Sites that are really good at something that consumers find important will gather a good following.
Also, given that MySpace is the #1 site in the US based on visits (according to Hitwise) and among the top 20 in the UK, it is hardly yesterday’s site.
Thanks, Heather. I really agree. I am inclined to the idea that a lot of the ‘generic’ social networks will develop specialisms. From what I can make out, MySpace has always been favourite for finding new music. I think that others would do well to stake a claim in being the specialists for nightlife/kids/fashion/video/politics/A particular country, etc.
Anyone else having bother with myspace or is it just my pc?
Last couple of days it seems it wont let me download any song from anywhere.
Anyone having same bother — or anyone how to sort it?