Thursday, January 13, 2011

Is This Finally the End of MySpace?

When was the last time you went on your MySpace account? I haven’t gone on mine in years. I grew out of using it as millions of other people have. When I do feel the need to connect to others, Twitter and Facebook serve me well. While MySpace has changed some of their interface to seem up to date, “Hot Social Networking Sit Cools as Facebook Grows” by Tim Arango reports on Tuesday the company had to lay off almost half of their staff. The layoff may be foreshadowing a sale of the company.

MySpace was a company so popular it was fought over by Viacom and News Corporation. When News Corporation won with a $580 million purchase, Viacom was embarrassed and fired its chief executive Tom Freston. Now, the company “reported a $156 million operating loss”.

Reasons sited in the article as to the exodus out of MySpace: people have lost passion in it, oversaturation of advertisement, MySpace focused on money as opposed to growth and user retention, and now its music community may soon be vanishing also.

This is simply the end of MySpace; despite many tries to make a comeback, it has failed. The website no longer holds appeal for former or prospective users. The article ends on a very thoughtful point: If MySpace can go from the leader of social media to a relic in Facebook’s shadow, could the same end happen to Facebook when another social media platform emerges?

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