The rise of social media started back in the early 2000s, and from there, it has only grown. In 2003, one of the largest social networking sites in the world came into existence and was called Myspace. Between 2005 and 2008, Myspace was the social networking platform that everyone wanted to use, and it became the largest social networking site in the world during that time.
A little background on Myspace is that it was a network that allowed users to create their profile pages. Thus, everyone could customize their profile to be whatever they wanted and make it fit their personalities. People that used Myspace often didn’t use their real names, but instead, a fictitious name. One of Myspace’s main uses was promoting other musicians. A section on the platform allowed all users to listen to songs and share them with whoever they pleased. Myspace also worked and gained popularity by someone who would’ve created a profile and invited all their friends. Once their friends made accounts and joined Myspace, they would become part of your “friend space.” Everyone now in the “friend space” became part of their network, and now you have more connections with more people.
Why Did Myspace Fail?
Myspace seems to be all butterflies and rainbows, especially when it was popular. But, as time went by, competition rose, their product became poor and inconsistent, the company had issues with heavy spending, and they also faced many legal battles.
Myspace’s most significant competition was Facebook, and Facebook was one of the main reasons why Myspace no longer is around. In addition, it was argued that Myspace had a poorly organized interface. Even though their marketing strategy was outstanding, the more technical issues Myspace faced were way behind other platforms that were being created. Once Myspace realized their problems were more technology-related, they attempted to fix them, but it was too late.
Another problem Myspace faced was that their primary source of income was solely by promoting ads. They thought that by taking the aggressive ad publishing strategy, their company would flourish and make more and more money, but it did quite the opposite of that. Ads are what made their platform less attractive to users. As years went by and more social media platforms were being developed, almost half of all Myspace users left their accounts in the dust or completely deleted them. It is prevalent for things to fade out as time passes, mainly social media platforms that play an essential role in current generations’ lives. If Myspace, at the time of its existence, fixed the obvious problems they were facing or possibly hired other people to help them figure out how to keep their platform from failing, they would probably still be around, just like Facebook. However, no one did that during the earlier stages of Myspace, which is why new generations don’t even know what Myspace is!
Today, Myspace is still active, but it isn’t a platform that people use daily as a social media platform. It is not the same platform it used to be, but it is still up and running. It is redesigned and has other features that are nowhere near what it used to be like. If the owners of Myspace did what they had to do in past years, things would be completely different. They needed to know how to manage competition, fix their mistakes so they no longer faced legal battles, minimized their spending, and kept their product more consistent. But because they did not do so, Myspace is a social media platform that went down the drain!
