Born: 2004 / Died: 2009
In January, 2005 Myspace started out as a very easy, simple social networking site and it turned into a very profitable idea. When Myspace was initially created it was nowhere near as elaborate as it is now. You were only allowed 8 top friends, not 16 or 24, you could only have a few pictures on it, you couldn’t design or find your own unique background (unless you knew HTML code) and there was no “phishing” or spam you had to worry about. At this time the only competition out there was Friendster, so Myspace was looking real good, especially with people like Tila Tequila promoting it.
Once the word got around about Myspace, people took full advantage of the money that was available to them. People didn’t know HTML, so others who did would charge to teach them. Others created unique layouts and charged per layout. The money was rolling in, people had their very own space, and Myspace was thriving. Only one month it had start it had over one million members and in less than a year it reached five million. Once it became obvious of how profitable Myspace could be, larger companies wanted their own piece. In 2005, News Corporation purchased MySpace for a whopping $580 million.
Myspace seemed to have been put in motion. Eventually it had an expanded storage capacity which allowed for more pictures, videos, music players, and flash videos. Companies, like Coca-Cola and Nike, comedians, musicians, and celebrities even began using it for promoting purposes. Life was good in the Myspace world, but like all things, it’s just a matter of time until it comes to an end.
Myspace was a great place to meet new people and stay in touch with old friends, but it also turned out to be a place to find underage children. Sex offenders preyed on the younger users and Myspace was actually sued by four families that claimed their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site. After that, Myspace made an announcement that they were going to ban all sexual offenders from their site. Then there was the incident of teenage girls and their mother that lured a girl to their house and beat her up. That also ended up in court. It’s really hard to make a comeback from events like these. Something else that didn’t help was that, as all this bad stuff was happening, another social networking site was creeping up.
It was an easy mountain to climb, but a very hard fall on the other side.
So who murdered Myspace? This is just something to ponder the next time you are updating your Facebook Wall or posting another Tweet.
Feel free to leave comments. Tell me why you think Myspace isn’t as popular as it once was.