The Social Scene - Is MySpace Dead?

Apologies for yesterday's thoroughly bunk post - I couldn't even look at the link without cringing today!  I thought I'd take another stab at it today which was an excellent idea before the Canucks blew three leads and lost to the Avalanche in overtime.  However, I did promise Shawn that I would take another stab at this topic and I'd hate to disappoint a quarter of my followers =) To compromise, I'm breaking social networking into five parts - MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, & Blogs.  Not only am I keeping this short enough for you to read in one go, but I'm giving myself a few extra days to write...sneaky, but you'll thank me in the end.

The Old MySpace

With formatting similar to the networking site Friendster, MySpace had it's fifteen minutes of fame between 2004 - 2006 before Facebook was open to the general public.  As a member since 2006 (before Facebook exploded), I fondly remember MySpace as full of creepy people wanting to be my friend and bands trying to make it big.  The great thing about MySpace was that it literally was YOUR own space.  Your page was whatever you wanted it to be which I think is the biggest draw for those in school (both high school and in post secondary institutions) and for young people just starting out in the working world.  It can be a battle to be heard, so why not set up a page to express who you really are. 

I'd never been a big user of MSN instant messaging, ICQ, or Friendster, so this was my first foray into social networking.  I'm not a computer savvy person but even I found setting up my page to be extremely easy.  So easy that I would change it at least once every month.  Eventually, I found myself bogged down friend requests that were somehow getting past my privacy settings and the core of who I was got lost beneath the clutter of posted comments and quizes, etc. on my page.  Enter Facebook in 2007, a cleaner, efficient way to keep in touch with all of my friends. 



My current MySpace



I've pretty much abandoned MySpace since joining Facebook but I keep my account to connect with new artists (i.e. Annie Stela, The Kin, Matt Nathanson etc.).  If you're desperate to see my MySpace Page (for whatever reason), click here to see what the general public sees.  To me, MySpace is dead except for musicians and their most loyal fans.  Apparently, I was wrong...

In an article by Jeremiah Owyang, posted on his Web Strategy blog, MySpace is still 76 million users strong and is showing signs of increase (as of 2009).  He's put together a collection of stats in his article, breaking down user populations, daily use rates, growth, and even geographical info.  It's a pretty interesting read and I'm looking forward to see what the stats from 2010 will look like (he hasn't posted them yet). 

Reading Owyang's article made me think twice about MySpace and prompted me to go login and see what the current MySpace is all about.  I still love the individuality and freedom that MySpace gives its users and the new layout is looking pretty cool, but I'm in too deep with Facebook to pull out at this point.  The amount of content I have on my page would be too much to lose (which is the same reason I gave back in 2007 when I refused to delete my MySpace page...) so I guess I'll just have to enjoy the best of both worlds.

In closing, is MySpace dead?  Definitely not.  I think that if it plays it's cards right, MySpace could be poised to make a bit of a come back.  I know it's already started with me =)