Where did MySpace go wrong?
When MySpace hit the market in 2003, it was immensely popular and reached people all over the world. Seeing its popularity and market value, many other giants introduced their social networking sites with special features. As time passed, only social networks that offer special, user-friendly networking features have managed to stay alive.
Even with the highly competitive social networking world, MySpace managed to retain its first place. But last year Facebook became the world’s largest social networking site pushing MySpace to the second place despite it being the best-monetized social network. The number of Facebook users across the globe is now a mind boggling 110 million, and that of MySpace is 83 million.
It is not a sudden downfall for MySpace; just a setback. For the past few years, after the introduction of Facebook in 2004, Myspace has been facing drops in existing user accounts and new user registration count. The main reason for this setback is lack of R&D, and other notable problems faced by users, such as accessibility, phishing spam, child safety and censorship.
The MySpace pages are designed by individuals with little HTML experience, and most of the pages do not satisfy the W3C standards. It hence causes accessibility problems when software like screen readers are used.
MySpace is considered the hotbed for spyware. Even though MySpace is taking necessary steps for safety, it is not fully safe. This is the major reason for the migration of users to other networking sites. It doesn’t have any censorship to control posting or viewing of pornographic content either.
MySpace makes revenue through advertisement. As the number of members reduces, the possibility of advertisers moving to other popular social network is more. Hence, it is the high time for the MySpace professionals to facilitate 2-way communication with their users and rework their site to meet market demands.
Tags: facebook, largest social networking site, myspace