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Is it time yet to repost this classic article? "Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?" http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/feb/08/business.comment http:

by acheron 11y ago

Is it time yet to repost this classic article? "Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?" http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/feb/08/business.comment http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/feb/08/business.c... Key quote: MySpace is well on the way to becoming what economists call a "natural monopoly". Users have invested so much social capital in putting up data about themselves it is not worth their changing sites, especially since every new user that MySpace attracts adds to its value as a network of interacting people.

soylentcola 11y ago
True, but one thing I've noticed with Facebook is that it was the first big social network that saw widespread adoption across almost all segments of (at least US) society. I don't doubt that it will eventually go the way of AOL and MySpace but there are some key things keeping it in use. With early ISPs like AOL, there was nothing really stopping you from moving to another provider that offered something better. Combined with the move toward broadband, any AOL-exclusive features just weren't enough to keep people around for the most part and you could still access the rest of the web, email, etc. regardless of your provider. With Facebook, you need to use their service in order to interact with people on it. I can't just use Google+ because I like the interface and mobile app better than Facebook. No matter how much I prefer another service, they aren't based on any common protocol like email so I need to use Facebook to interact with people who use it. And with MySpace, the audience was mostly younger people. Sure, some of us had parents or employers that maintained a profile but Facebook was the first big social network that got your mom, your grandma, your boss, your doctor, your old college professor, and all the neighbors on your block to sign up. The under-30 crowd will switch services for something newer and better but the critical mass of Facebook users is hard to get around. Coming back to Google+, I really am one of the (few apparently) people who think it's a much better alternative to Facebook. Chat is better. Levels of sharing work better and are easier to manage. The interface is smoother. There aren't game and app requests. The mobile app is better. Photo sharing is better. Basically on a technical level, it's better all around. But when it came out and I started using it, the thing I quickly came to realize was that even if my techie friends also were trying it out, the vast majority of non-enthusiasts found the idea of setting up a profile to be annoying and not worth their time. They already had a Facebook after all. To use G+ you would either need to maintain two profiles on two services or decide to only talk to the 10% of your contacts who took the time to set up this new thing. In the end, it never really made a dent outside of niche uses (Photography, Ingress players, etc) and has largely become the butt of jokes. Another failed challenger undone by lack of interoperability and the momentum of a large incumbent. If there were some way to choose your platform and still communicate with the same people (a la email) then Facebook would have some sort of competition but there's no way in hell they would open themselves up to that sort of competition. And currently, there aren't any must-have features compelling enough to make people either maintain multiple profiles or just uproot en masse.
jhildings 11y ago
It's like the rule of all social media networks, they will eventually day. Just think of ICQ, Yahoo, MSN Messenger or the mentioned MySpace
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
I don't think that article is necessarily wrong. You can have natural monopolies that switch companies, but still remain monopolies (look at Apple's early 80s success that was completely squashed by DOS/Windows). Everyone migrated to Facebook and ditched myspace. It doesn't really compete with anyone now. Facebook seemed to have learned from myspace's mistakes and have been successful for a decade now. I think a shift to another social media platform is just not in the cards, at least for the forseeable future.
bkeroack 11y ago
MySpace made many mistakes, the worst of which is that they would do absolutely anything to increase short term revenue regardless of the effect on the experience. The result was a messy, user-hostile product that was bleeding users to anything that offered a better social experience. Zuckerberg is smarter than that. Facebook may (probably will, at some point) lose its dominance, but it won't be a repeat of the MySpace debacle. Perhaps people will gradually realize that "Facebooking" is not the same as real socializing, it's a low-effort, low-value pseudo-social entertainment activity.
- mreiland 11y ago
  I still wake up in cold sweats after reliving the nightmare of some Myspace pages...
mawburn 11y ago
Facebook has something MySpace never achieved and something that could easily set it's place firmly where it's at, given they don't make any major changes to mess it up: The Geriatric Crowd. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time in history that anyone in the tech industry captured this crowd in a major way. Those in my family over 70, on both sides, can barely make a phone call on a cell phone and don't even really know what texting is... but they sure know how to use Facebook. That's how they see their grandbabbies, of course they know how.
- xirdstl 11y ago
  By that logic, if people started leaving Facebook for another service to post their photos, the older crowd would follow them in order to keep seeing their grandchildren.
- nilkn 11y ago
  I know this is going to be morbid, but the problem with the geriatric crowd when it comes to technology is that they have a tendency to die. The current geriatric generation is using Facebook to some degree (though in the case of my family no one over 70 uses it). What about the next generation of old people? Facebook will have to keep recapturing this market. This is very problematic because the older generation only interested in family photos really couldn't care less about the service itself; they're going to use whatever their kids and grandkids use, so long as it's not too complex (and with each generation the maximum technological complexity for the geriatric crowd will go up quite a lot). The other problem with having family on a social media is that this immediately limits what people can safely use the service for, which leads to an inevitable but slow exodus of users and their content. Facebook is the family friendly zone for sharing photos and short notes, and it's increasingly only that and nothing else. You have Instagram for stuff you don't want your family to see. You have tumblr for stuff you don't even want many of your friends to see. And then there are the messaging apps. FB still performs very well in this arena, but it's clearly struggling against the likes of Snapchat, and I expect in 5-10 years Snapchat itself will be struggling against another newcomer with FB messenger a distant memory.
  - 11y ago

by acheron 11y ago

soylentcola 11y ago

True, but one thing I've noticed with Facebook is that it was the first big social network that saw widespread adoption across almost all segments of (at least US) society. I don't doubt that it will eventually go the way of AOL and MySpace but there are some key things keeping it in use. With early ISPs like AOL, there was nothing really stopping you from moving to another provider that offered something better. Combined with the move toward broadband, any AOL-exclusive features just weren't enough to keep people around for the most part and you could still access the rest of the web, email, etc. regardless of your provider. With Facebook, you need to use their service in order to interact with people on it. I can't just use Google+ because I like the interface and mobile app better than Facebook. No matter how much I prefer another service, they aren't based on any common protocol like email so I need to use Facebook to interact with people who use it. And with MySpace, the audience was mostly younger people. Sure, some of us had parents or employers that maintained a profile but Facebook was the first big social network that got your mom, your grandma, your boss, your doctor, your old college professor, and all the neighbors on your block to sign up. The under-30 crowd will switch services for something newer and better but the critical mass of Facebook users is hard to get around. Coming back to Google+, I really am one of the (few apparently) people who think it's a much better alternative to Facebook. Chat is better. Levels of sharing work better and are easier to manage. The interface is smoother. There aren't game and app requests. The mobile app is better. Photo sharing is better. Basically on a technical level, it's better all around. But when it came out and I started using it, the thing I quickly came to realize was that even if my techie friends also were trying it out, the vast majority of non-enthusiasts found the idea of setting up a profile to be annoying and not worth their time. They already had a Facebook after all. To use G+ you would either need to maintain two profiles on two services or decide to only talk to the 10% of your contacts who took the time to set up this new thing. In the end, it never really made a dent outside of niche uses (Photography, Ingress players, etc) and has largely become the butt of jokes. Another failed challenger undone by lack of interoperability and the momentum of a large incumbent. If there were some way to choose your platform and still communicate with the same people (a la email) then Facebook would have some sort of competition but there's no way in hell they would open themselves up to that sort of competition. And currently, there aren't any must-have features compelling enough to make people either maintain multiple profiles or just uproot en masse.

jhildings 11y ago

It's like the rule of all social media networks, they will eventually day. Just think of ICQ, Yahoo, MSN Messenger or the mentioned MySpace

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

I don't think that article is necessarily wrong. You can have natural monopolies that switch companies, but still remain monopolies (look at Apple's early 80s success that was completely squashed by DOS/Windows). Everyone migrated to Facebook and ditched myspace. It doesn't really compete with anyone now. Facebook seemed to have learned from myspace's mistakes and have been successful for a decade now. I think a shift to another social media platform is just not in the cards, at least for the forseeable future.

bkeroack 11y ago

MySpace made many mistakes, the worst of which is that they would do absolutely anything to increase short term revenue regardless of the effect on the experience. The result was a messy, user-hostile product that was bleeding users to anything that offered a better social experience. Zuckerberg is smarter than that. Facebook may (probably will, at some point) lose its dominance, but it won't be a repeat of the MySpace debacle. Perhaps people will gradually realize that "Facebooking" is not the same as real socializing, it's a low-effort, low-value pseudo-social entertainment activity.

mreiland 11y ago
I still wake up in cold sweats after reliving the nightmare of some Myspace pages...

mawburn 11y ago

Facebook has something MySpace never achieved and something that could easily set it's place firmly where it's at, given they don't make any major changes to mess it up: The Geriatric Crowd. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time in history that anyone in the tech industry captured this crowd in a major way. Those in my family over 70, on both sides, can barely make a phone call on a cell phone and don't even really know what texting is... but they sure know how to use Facebook. That's how they see their grandbabbies, of course they know how.

xirdstl 11y ago
By that logic, if people started leaving Facebook for another service to post their photos, the older crowd would follow them in order to keep seeing their grandchildren.
nilkn 11y ago
I know this is going to be morbid, but the problem with the geriatric crowd when it comes to technology is that they have a tendency to die. The current geriatric generation is using Facebook to some degree (though in the case of my family no one over 70 uses it). What about the next generation of old people? Facebook will have to keep recapturing this market. This is very problematic because the older generation only interested in family photos really couldn't care less about the service itself; they're going to use whatever their kids and grandkids use, so long as it's not too complex (and with each generation the maximum technological complexity for the geriatric crowd will go up quite a lot). The other problem with having family on a social media is that this immediately limits what people can safely use the service for, which leads to an inevitable but slow exodus of users and their content. Facebook is the family friendly zone for sharing photos and short notes, and it's increasingly only that and nothing else. You have Instagram for stuff you don't want your family to see. You have tumblr for stuff you don't even want many of your friends to see. And then there are the messaging apps. FB still performs very well in this arena, but it's clearly struggling against the likes of Snapchat, and I expect in 5-10 years Snapchat itself will be struggling against another newcomer with FB messenger a distant memory.
- 11y ago