Facebook is so functional, so effortless and so accessible, why would anyone bother with an old-fashioned site like Myspace? After all, the Internet is a dangerously fickle environment, where the tradition of loyalty is non-existent.
The figures show that Facebook’s audience is going in the opposite direction to Myspace’s – they crossed paths in April, but is the ease of use the only piece in play here?
Facebook is still an independent company – although professional, the website still has a parochial feel to it.
Myspace, on the other hand, might still communicate with its audience through everybody’s friend, ‘Tom’ (launch president, Tom Anderson), but the gobbling-up of the company by Rupert Murdoch’s massive News Corporation in 2005 was so well publicised that over time it has lost some of its appeal. Why would a huge multinational want a company like Myspace other than to make money, and lots of it.
Everyone knows that there are only two ways to make money through a platform like Myspace, and they are:
1. A sign-up fee or monthly cost to each user (or group of super-users)
2. Advertising
And let’s be honest, both are unappealing to the consumer.
But of course, the same has happened with YouTube – eaten for breakfast by Google less than 2 years after its formation, and Flickr, purchased by Google’s arch-enemy Yahoo! just 13 months after its creation.
Is social media war on the horizon?