Facebook bet heavily on engineering talent and it's paying off.
Myspace has had very few updates to its site and narrowly focused on the niches it dominated. It's now paying the price as Facebook continues to grow while Myspace stagnates.
The article said that Myspace isn't done with. While they'll probably be able to stay profitable and (and therefore still around) for quite a while, unless they have a complete company culture change I doubt they'll ever be able to get back to #1 again.
> Facebook bet heavily on engineering talent and it's paying off.
It's paying off in spades--tons more unmonetizable foreign traffic. Facebook is bleeding cash, MySpace is actually in the green. Facebook needs to start making money or they simply won't be around to celebrate "beating" MySpace.
Yes. Long term growth and profitability, vs. quick and easy returns.
Myspace choose maximum return, and their userbase is leaving.
I bet you facebook could turn their site into %80 adds, and make lots of money in the short term, at the prospect of loosing their customers and future growth.
In early 2000, GM had the cash and the chance to invest on new and more effient cars, but they decided to go all the way in SUVs. I mean, why should have? SUVs are so much more profitable right now!?!
And look at how the foreign automakers are eating their lunch. The VOLT is about 7 years late, (the insight and the prius were released almost a decade ago).
And Toyota/Honda are not the bankrupts ones.
Some things are simply long term business decisions. I have to bet my money on who will still be around in 5 years from now, myspace is not the one to bet. It is dying, and rightfully so.
I'm not on facebook, but does facebook have anything similar to Myspace music?
Myspace, while I'm not really a user of that service either, has its niechés which AFAIK isn't available on facebook and neither would they make much sense being there.
Facebook is winning because it has hit the jackpot in finding how to convince regular consumers to throw away their privacy in trade for connecting with friends.
I never had a single person find me via myspace whereas dozens of people who I had lost contact with by all other means found me on facebook. This only happens because facebook forces me to use my real name as well as seductively inviting me to reveal all kinds of other information and allows people to search on it and find me and even see a picture. As much as I object to this, it's what has entrenched facebook in my life.
I'm not so sure Myspace is unhappy about this. There's traffic, and then there's monetizable traffic, and Myspace seems to still be cleaning up as far as the latter goes. They've got much more convincing revenue streams.
I don't think your conviction is based on the data. MySpace is only profitable because Google blinked. I would love to hear about these "much more convincing revenue streams" of which you speak.
Mark Zuckerberg practically lives at the office. Chris DeWolfe spends half his time chasing starlets. It's quite easy to imagine how that would play out over an extended period of time, in terms of organizational focus and execution.
The average user doesnt know or care what Chris or Mark spend their time doing. They care about the experience. Though I hate the site, I still go to Myspace when I'm at work to listen to tunes. Though I prefer Facebook, as a personal user, Myspace is making way more off of me. (Through my business though, my apps are generating Facebook millions of ad impressions per day.)
Also, ask any app developer where the better ecpms are. We just launched our Myspace apps 2 days ago, but I'll try to give some exact numbers when we've had some more time.
In the end, I think the winner in the monetization wars is going to be the one who provides the better platform and monetizes it better. Though their platform is maybe more painful to develop for, Myspace has a lead there.
I will have to agree with mattmaroon on this. I dont think Myspace is in for trouble, I think every social network will see a saturation point like any other company. Then it becomes pure optimization.
i had a myspace account for years, doing dj booking & events promo. after a few months of beeing inactive my account was suspended without any prior notification ... just like how my lycos account went down years ago ...
Myspace has had very few updates to its site and narrowly focused on the niches it dominated. It's now paying the price as Facebook continues to grow while Myspace stagnates.
The article said that Myspace isn't done with. While they'll probably be able to stay profitable and (and therefore still around) for quite a while, unless they have a complete company culture change I doubt they'll ever be able to get back to #1 again.