Slashdot Mirror
The MySpace Ecosystem
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an article on how MySpace is developing its own ecosystem in the same way that Microsoft did it with Windows, and Apple with the iPod. From the article: 'Now, MySpace is beginning to create its own ecosystem of third-party companies that are developing features and applications for the giant digital community. The idea is to encourage other companies to use their creativity and expertise to come up with things for MySpace users that MySpace itself hasn't. That could be anything from letting people add to their MySpace home pages from a mobile phone or creating a slide show of their favorite MySpace photos."
It's a goddamn website, Jim, not the Everglades!
I will give you one honest way I've found myspace useful. I'm 26, out of school for a little bit. MySpace has been a great "no pressure" way to get back in contact with those people I haven't spoken to in a few years.
You know, there are those people you had some classes with, saw at parties, ran in the same general crowd, but never became close friends. With MySpace, you can just search for school/graduating class/etc. come across these people you hadn't thought about in awhile, and make them your "friend".
No need to have lengthy conversations, you don't even have to talk to each other at all. But it never hurts to have those contacts in case you're really bored one weekend/job hunting/whatever. Then you just leave a comment or send an email saying, "Wanna head to the bar this weekend?" "Oh, I see you work at Initech, could I give you my resume?" or just "Hey, remember that time...?"
In short, it's a great link to people you know but don't have the need and/or desire to talk to all the time.
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Seriously... why bother with anything new if your system is too slow for anyone to be able to use it?
Right now, I was just waiting for my profile to load for about 2 minutes - and that's not even that bad. Some features just time out or load partially.
MySpace is simply collapsing under its own load.
It has become too popular for its own good.
First, get the site to stay up - then and only then can you add features.
-- This sig for rent.
Hating on MySpace is the "in" thing. Matter of fact, it's even more cool than MySpace itself.
Well said.
For my own part, I say anything that is equally despised by both politicians and web-design snobs can't be all bad.
Swerving back on topic, this is a non-story. There's no need to read Business Week to know this is going on. Just randomly pull up a few MySpace pages and it becomes immediately obvious, because these little third-party widgets for enhancing MySpace pages are extremely popular, and it would not take you long to stumble across a few of them.
I wouldn't call MySpace an "ecosystem", so much as I would call it a "framework." The fact that it's so crufty to begin with creates a rich environment for offering 3rd-party mods, because only a total masochist would attempt to alter a MySpace page with a text editor.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Simple. Ask for a credit card and then charge a dollar to it. Call the charge "Age Verification". Then refund the charge in 28 days. If some kid steals his Dad's cc then the Dad is going to see the charge on the bill and start asking questions.
Every time myspace is mentioned on slashdot, we same exactly the same thing. 98% of comments are just "UGH MYSPACE SUCKS", leaving absolutely no space for the kind of intelligent debate in the comments which brought me to slashdot in the first place.
So I thought I would try and buck the trend.
Let's see what the common complaints are about myspace:
First, some technical/webdesigner type ones.
Second, some more social/content focused ones.
You know what? Pretty much all true. I can't argue with it. And for exactly these reasons, I used to preach anti-myspace rants in exactly the same vein as this comment. I might even have done so on slashdot itself -- I know for a fact I did on other forums, extensively.
But that's not quite the whole story.
Things are a bit different for music accounts.
Ya see, I'm in a band (unsigned/independent) and being a web developer for a day job, I'm left to look after that side of our operations. For the longest time I refused to get the band a myspace page for all the above reasons - but eventually the band forced me to drop my web designer snootiness about myspace and sort us out a page, and since then I've been forced to change my opinions a bit. For bands/musicians, it's genuinely quite useful.
When we started the page, I went on an adding spree, not adding strangers just to bump up our friend count, but just adding (1) people who are genuinely our friends (2) people who've previously bought our cds / come to our gigs / bigged us up, (3) a few famous bands/djs/people who are influences and inspirations to us. Aside from that I don't add request anyone -- I wait for them to add request us! And they do...! Usually something between 1 and half a dozen every day for the last month or so. Sometimes they're obviously people who have been to our gigs but sometimes they're obviously not (because they live in countries we've never played), they're just people who have been searching for music, come across us and liked the tunes...
And this is the crux of it. Sure, personally, as a "geeky" / "old school" web user, I'd much rather search google, find a website, and download an mp3 (or ogg, if you insist ;) ), than search myspace, find a profile, and listen with a flash player. Like most of you guys.
But I - and you guys - are not typical. Obviously most people find the convenience of myspace and its auto-playing songs more appealing. Do you know how many emails I get saying "I randomly found your website from google and listened to your mp3s" -- pretty much none. Ever. Do you know how many messages from complete randoms on myspace saying "nice tunes" I get -- one every few weeks or so. As a band member/promoter you just can't ignore that!
It genuinely works for getting new fans and networking. Example: A couple of weeks ago we played at a festival near Amsterdam (we're based in London). When I asked the promoter how he discovered us and decided we were worth paying to bring over from the UK (remember, we're completely unsigned, we have no label or financial backing, we book all our own gigs ourselves, we record, produce, finance, and distribute our albums ourself, we have next to no media coverage...) he said "myspace".
So, if you want to bash it for being ugly and full of annoying emo kids, stolen pictures and unreadable profiles I can't really argue. It is. On the other hand... getting paid to go to Amsterdam for a long weekend isn't