That's a symptom, not a cause. MySpace saw Facebook coming. I remember a quote from Rupert Murdoch in 2006-2007 saying that MySpace was losing to Facebook. T

That's a symptom, not a cause. MySpace saw Facebook coming. I remember a quote from Rupert Murdoch in 2006-2007 saying that MySpace was losing to Facebook. There are a million ways they could have used their position to crush Facebook, but they (a) didn't have a strong engineering culture and (b) were focused strongly on revenue over growth and product. I remember a "joking" quote from a MySpace exec where he said they don't mind error pages, because it gives them the chance to serve more ad impressions! No intelligent person I know would want to work at MySpace, while Facebook successfully overcame its early stigma as a "toy website" and is now one of the best places for engineers in Silicon Valley. MySpace's stupid product decisions were a consequence of these underlying problems.