MySpace: The Abandoned Mall

MySpace has not been relevant in years. Nobody seems to use the social network with any kind of frequency except for maybe bands and adult film stars. On the heels of the new Twitter roll out, Myspace (or "My_____") is launching its own redesign in a desperate grab for new users as they reposition themselves as a Generation Y oriented "social entertainment" network

This is the last stand for the News Corporation owned social network. The move is bold and frankly, what do they have to lose (besides more money)? Not only has MySpace not been "cool" in a very long time, making fun of them has not been either.

I still remember those MySpace pages that were customized with awful pictures, animations, and images improperly formatted that hurt my eyes. This revamp is a few years far too late as MySpace failed to innovate. There is also the accusation they stole their new design.

This new MySpace will fail as the site is really already dead and has been for a very long time with advertisers flocking away as they hemorrhage users like crazy. The reason Facebook is durable, despite losing some of its early luster, is its ubiquity. It has become like email in its necessity, not to mention the crowd sourcing and consumer information collecting power it wields.

MySpace did enjoy an inexplicably outdated reference in the film and comic book Kick-Ass earlier this year. However, I do love that one sequence in Funny People where Adam Sandler's comedian character plays a show at MySpace headquarters, gently mocking them. James Taylor randomly yells out "F*ck Facebook!" Co-founder Tom Anderson even has a small cameo in the film, but will he have any friends left?

"I jumped on MySpace, and now it's pretty much an abandoned shopping mall. [...] An abandoned mall still had trash, heating and cleaning services drop by, I guess. [...] Any social networking site, like a great punk band or TV show, has entropy and collapse built into its biography."

— Patton Oswalt


Source | CNN / Mashable