Youths No Longer Predominant on MySpace

mikesd81 writes "The Associated Press is reporting on the rapid aging of MySpace. More than half of MySpace's users are now 35 or older. From the article: 'Just a year ago, teens under 18 made up about 25 percent of MySpace, the popular online hangout run by News Corp. That's now down to 12 percent in the comScore analysis released Thursday. By contrast, the 35-54 group at MySpace grew to 41 percent in August, from 32 percent a year earlier ... The study was based on comScore's regular panels for measuring Internet audiences, rather than MySpace's registration information, where users often lie about their age.'"

Comments

Re:because its so yesterday

[nine-times]

That was my first thought when I saw the headline. I don't really talk to teenagers these days, so I don't know about MySpace, but some time ago I read about somebody's "theory of cool" (I can't remember where) that seemed pretty accurate. The idea is that there are stages that pretty much everything "cool" goes through, and it went something like this:

1. First it's underground. Practically nobody knows about it, but the people who know about it are the "cool kids".
2. The other kids start finding out about it, and it becomes generally known as "cool". By this time, most of the "cool kids" have actually already moved on to something else
3. It starts popping up in the mainstream, and then even the geeky kids know about it. The cool kids have already left, and most of the regular kids start leaving because the inclusion of geeky kids means it's not cool anymore.
4. Finally, when it hasn't been cool for months, parents, and older people in general, start figuring it out. It might appeal to them, or it might not, but this is the stage where your Grandpa tries to rap because he thinks it's funny.
5. Every now and then the whole things starts up again 10 or 20 years later when a new generation of cool kids take it up, and it becomes "retro".

I knew MySpace was heading in this direction, but there's one thing that might save it. Apparently it started out as a place for musicians and became a general social networking site, and as it has become less cool, it seems to be reverting to a place for musicians... And there it might continue to eek out enough profits to get by. But we all knew it wouldn't stay the cool place forever.

I've wondered, in fact, if this might become a new business model in the new internet economy. A "hit of the moment with planned obsolescence". It seems to me that everything cool dies off, and internet fads spike quickly and then degrade. The key might be that, instead of planning to continue growing at ridiculous speeds, these sites might figure out how to squeeze everything they can out of the spike, and then degrade gracefully, either without any great loss or, if they're lucky, to become a minor fixture on the net.

On the other hand, I guess there's no incentive to do that. From the point of view of the owners, it's better to sell during the spike for a ridiculously high price, and let someone else deal with trying to keep the growth rate up on the now "uncool" venture. First Napster, now MySpace, next up, YouTube.

Old Age

[Noexit]

I guess I'm one of them. I put up a MySpace page a few months ago, trying to locate people for planning a 20th high school reunion. I've actually found more of my classmates at MySpace than at any other site on the 'net.