In a recent TechCrunch article, Myspace founder Tom Anderson (sideways guy) admitted that his social network was the casualty of its own success. "MySpace “committed suicide” through continual mismanagement."
We spoke in class about how the recent $34 Million acquisition of Myspace was a huge comedown from the $580 M price tag that NewsCorp originally paid for it. So what went wrong? My belief is a lack of accountability that arose from a diverse ownership. In Julia Angwin's book Stealing Myspace, she discusses the origins of the social network - Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe discovered the website while working at a marketing company called eUniverse. Shortly after the Newscorp acquisition in 2006, Google spent $900 Million on the rights to provide search results and display ads. Both Newscorp, the original founders, and the eUniverse team made a ton of money at Google's expense. After the payout, there was no real motivation from the original innovators, and there was no real vision from the new owners. Facebook's decision to stay private is one of the reasons why it has outlast Myspace.
1 comment:
Another thing I like to add at least from a consumer level or what drove me away from myspace is the bug myspace found on the textbox area that allows user to customize their profile page. This bug ended up being such a popular feature for myspace that it ended up driving people like me away as well.
The idea of customizing your profile on myspace was uniquely different. It generated a lot of buzz and traction until someone figured out a way to add malware onto it. People's computers were infected by these malware which I think led to the migration over to Facebook and its simplistic design.
Fast forward to now, Facebook is starting to become something of a myspace with the different applications and likes. However, what distinguishes Facebook from myspace is that we have the ability to hide these unwanted broadcasts. And now Google+ is much more simpler, I think some people will be migrating over to Google+ because of it.. like myself.
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