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MySpace's Melting Makes Murdoch Mad
Barence writes "Facebook has overtaken rival social network MySpace for the first time — provoking an angry outburst from Rupert Murdoch, the man who paid $580m for MySpace only three years ago."
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I've read the linked article a few times and I'm not sure where there is anything to indicate he is mad. Nice use of alliteration though. I did find this article about the difference in growth between the two sites and it has a lot more information about the situation in general, though nothing about Murdoch's reaction. I couldn't find anything more about that - like where and when he said the things they say he said, what the tone was, etc.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Facebook is on it's way out too. I stopped using it when the plethora of stupid dirty looking applications starting taking over everybody's pages making facebook look more like myspace.
Now facebook is even spammier than myspace, with hundreds of applications I can't stand, and all their invites. I have to "add" an application in order to view it. I don't want to view it. I don't want a "drink" invitation, or a "pirate" invitation. Leave me alone.
This is why I quit Facebook
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Rupert Murdoch has made his millions by becoming a shill for the State. That's a given. He promotes big, lovely government, and he was paid well by the Powers that Be.
MySpace, though, is the anti-thesis of government. It's about freedom. People don't necessarily realize that, but that's the end result from allowing people to freely communicate, gather and entertain.
Murdoch overpaid for something that can probably never make a reasonable profit. It's like trying to commercialize peer groups. It doesn't work. Murdoch screwed up time and time again by not providing for correct advertising focus to the customers of MySpace. The advertising doesn't work. It's a broken system. Facebook is no better, in my opinion, but at least they're providing services that a slightly upper crust clientele wants.
The future of the web is not about large-scale sites dominating over tiny ones. It's the whole long tail situation: the big sites are mere portals to other sites, and the sites that fail to do this properly will be hurt significantly by trying to be the big boy on campus. Those who made money by being shills for the State will also suffer (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc). The long tail is getting longer, and thicker, and stronger, and it will become superior in financial clout than the few large sites that used to be powerful. Even slashdot (probably NOT a shill for the State) is likely finding pain as smaller sites/blogs/forums are grabbing a larger chunk of the pie.
So what should Murdoch do? Break down MySpace. Don't be one big site on one big platform: expand to being tiny widgets and plugins that are part of the long tail of tiny blogs and forums and personal webpages. Let people host their MySpace widget on their platform, and send traffic back to MySpace as MySpace sends traffic to billions of tiny sites. MySpace can brand the widget with their own advertising or marketing clout because it'll be a part of millions or billions of sites.
But Murdoch doesn't understand this. Murdoch doesn't want to. He thought "Ohh, billions of teenagers and young adults, we'll sell iPod thingies to them and make trillions! And then we'll push the Iraq War on them subconsciously."
You failed Rupert. Go away.
The fact that the site was developed using Cold Fusion should have signaled the first sign of its impending demise.
the error is in how murdoch quantified what he was purchasing, the perception of what he was actually getting for his money: the error is in thinking you are buying a permanent piece of major real estate on the web. no, what you are buying is a major marketing and branding tool for a few years... which is indeed still worth $500 million
for his $500 million, he gets a few years of ad revenue, some "showing soon" movie marketing hype, some cross-branding possibilities, steering a few kids towards a fox reality show, etc. but after a few years run, the site is worth bupkus
as for facebook's $15 billion, all i can do is laugh. $15 billion?! insane. because facebook too will be worth the gum on my sneaker in a few years. facebook is worth what myspace is worth: $500 million
zuckerman or zuckerberg or whatever the kids name: he should have sold facebook out. hes going to be like that friendster guy is today in a few years: the friendster guy daily kicks himself in the ass for not selling out when he could have. zuckerdude is thinking he has the next google on his hands. no, he has the next xanga. sell out kid, asap
thats how you really make money on social networking sites: you sell out to established media conglomerates, and then go play frisbee. to keep a hold of the site, and thinking you are going to become a permanent internet portal, like google, is hubris, arrogance, egotism. unless you are planning to seque into becoming a search engine, and somehow actually take out google... heh, googd luck. but that's the only sound strategy to take if you plan on keeping the social networking site rather than selling out, upping the ante and going for the diamond ring
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's always been used as a significant metric, and I've never understood why. This article is a perfect example. 120million unique visitors in a month. If we assume that's a peak... and that it's been trending generally upward but not dramatically, it's not too hard to extrapolate at least 2 billion "unique hits" in 2 years. The problem with that is that there are significantly less than 2 billion people people online. So what do those numbers really mean?
I've had no end of trouble with MySpace. I'm not able to prevent my music from playing when you load my page, even though that's how I set it in my profile. I've always allowed downloads of my MP3s, but at some point they stopped being downloadable. I had to delete them all and re-upload them to get the downloads back.
I have actually found MySpace pages that had been customized in such a way as to make FireFox crash just by loading the page!
My only complaint about FaceBook is that it doesn't allow for downloading MP3s - but that's a lack of a desired feature, and not an actual bug.
Most young people these days are trying out both. I don't think it takes much time for them all to figure out which one is better.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
FTFA
He might as well have said it was not a real website. That kind of talk is crazy, but Steve Ballmer managed to outdo Mrudoch for cluelessness and call him an idiot at the same time.
Moneymen destroy cool concept, 50% chance of rain, news at 10PM.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
myspace will become the next geocities, a stale linkfarm with ancient content. facebook will follow a few years after. social websites can only be popular for so long before they're no longer the "in" "cool" thing.