Let’s go back in time for a little bit shall we? Back to a time when I was just a spotty music obsessed teenager, who, like millions of people across the globe spent an inordinate amount of time logged onto one website. MySpace.
Launched in 2003 MySpace was the place to go to meet new people, and for a lot of people, find new music and publicise themselves to millions worldwide. This was a brand new concept and one that took off at an incredible speed. People were able to have their own ‘mini website’ all about them and customize it so it screamed every inch of their personality. They could upload pictures, write blogs and generally share their thoughts throughout the day.
As well as the user being able to set up their page to showcase themselves to the world, MySpace also allowed users to comment on each others pages. This was the advent of ‘social networking’ on this global scale, and people loved it.
So what went wrong? How did MySpace go from being the most visited website in the U.S. to the desolate wasteland of a website that it is today?
A lot of people say the demise all started when MySpace was bought by media guru Rupert Murdoch in 2005. However, MySpace continued to grow for a further 3 years after this but you have to bear in mind there really wasn’t any competition as Facebook was still in it’s infancy and being targeted only at selected colleges and universities.
When Facebook, and Twitter, hit the mainstream market they offered users something very different. Something that wasn’t geared around the music and entertainment scene, but instead set up purely for socialising. As a result they quickly turned users from MySpace and by 2008 MySpace had been overtaken by Facebook in the Alexa rankings.
The fact that MySpace couldn’t evolve meant they could only hold onto a niche market and subsequently meant that they were sold in 2011 $35 million, far less than the $12 billion valuation back in 2008.
So why are MySpace relaunching? Considering the global domination of Facebook and Twitter what can they hope to achieve by doing this?
Well why not have a look for yourself here?
It all looks nice and fresh, very metro UI based. I love the look of this new MySpace and I’m keen to give it go. I don’t for a second think that it’s going to trouble the likes of Facebook and it could well end up in the same situation as Google+, which is brilliant and in many ways better than Facebook, but it just can’t tempt people away.
I would like to see MySpace keep to its roots and try and push the music and media side to social networking. It could be a brilliant hub for creative types all over the world to socialise, share work, and find inspiration.
Judging by the interface shown in the video it would work really well, I just hope that’s how it goes!
So what about you guys. Will any of you be having a look at the new MySpace and what would you like to see being offered?
