I can remember towards the end of my junior year in high school creating a MySpace account. I had a friend in college who was using it and he said through it he had discovered some good bands and met cool people. During my senior year in high school, everyone had it. People didn’t get phone numbers anymore. It was like “I’ll send you a message on MySpace.” Me along with many others were part of the MySpace generation.
With the big boom in 2006-2007, everyone and their mother (literally) was connected to the network. Although I connected to Facebook when I got to college with my .edu e-mail (when it used to be exclusive to college students), MySpace was still the primary source for me to communicate with my friends.
But when Facebook opened its network to every e-mail and created the instant messaging “Chat” application to its website, way more people started using Facebook. Not even that, users would stay connected all day to wait for a friend to sign on so that they could talk to each other. Because of Chat, more users got addicted to Facebook, therefore slowly killing off Facebook.
Throughout the years, MySpace has been trying to catch up with Facebook by adding the "Like" button along with the timeline format, so that users can feel familiarized with both networks. Fail. While MySpace lost 30 million users, Facebook gained 40 million. As of recently, MySpace is now my____, but that hasn't made much of a difference. News Corp., owners of MySpace, has hired investment bank Allen & Co. to explore possible deal opportunities for the website.
Personally, I think it's too late to salvage the website. Younger users are appealed to its funky layout, but it doesn't draw their attention for too long. The MySpace generation has grown out of this teen phase to go back to it. Users in their thirties and up feel like it's too hip for them.
The only way I see the website being resurrected is that it becomes a network solely for music, movies, entertainment, etc. Even then, it would be difficult to attract users to join the site. At the end of the day, everything will be connected with Facebook, and it would be almost impossible to take them down... unless Apple steps up to the plate!
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