Since there is currently an endless preoccupation with MySpace and the browser crashing nightmare that it is ...
Here is some interview research with actual MySpace users and there are some interesting insight that can be drawn
The short as I see it is
- MySpace is used to talk to actual friends
- So it’s really just part of email/phone/im. Brilliant. No may to monetize that.
- MySpace is used to find out what’s going on
- So it's a bit like google local. So you can monetize that. A bit.
- Advertising/Marketting on MySpace is largely ignored
- In other words ... somebody is going to lose money on this.
For my next trick I’ll be nailing virtual jelly to the MySpace ceiling. Or nailing something in MySpace. Maybe Bambi. With an i.
Some of the interesting bits
- On meeting people [real answer: god no]
- A few hours spent on MySpace is seen as wasted time.
- Or in reality a few minutes
- A few hours spent on MySpace is seen as wasted time.
- It’s possible to develop a friendship with someone you met briefly at a pub/club.
- If I ever ask for someones MySpace address instead of their phone number, beat me to death with a bar stool. Please
- What exactly does retrace your steps mean on MySpace
- Surely not. What an eye bleeding shock. So basically it's AmIHotOrNot all over. Surprise surprise. Not! The new site for the attention seeking generation. Brilliant. Remind me how much money AIHON made per person ...
- Charlie said the one thing he will miss is not being able to keep track of club nights and bands on MySpace.
- Yeah lowering the point of entry for bands is (IMvHO) the reason for MySpace's success. Seriously I'd love to see a geek vs musical ration (coupled with which band member is the least geeky (lead guitar) and most (drummer)
- Lucy used MySpace a lot to check out clubs and pubs; what’s on, opening hours, entry price.
- Seriously do these clubs not have a actual frigging web address. I make a point of not going anywhere that doesn't have it's own home page (not really)
- None could imagine spending much time on a social networking site when they are 30.
- cause 30 is like so old (sigh)
- Stay away from emailing people
- Sure, welcome to "you're about to be spammed to death as MySpace sells access to you to anyone who will pay
- Advertisements for a site would make no difference.
- Tell that to the zillion billion people who are clambering over each other to get a nanosecond of your bleeding (seriously who designs these pages) eyeballs
- Users often hear about things being marketed through ‘bulletin’ on MySpace homepage (e.g. X-men), but easy to ignore.
- Because at the end of the day, that's just not cool dude
1. Dragon
English is your friend. So is punctuation.
“MySpace is used to talk to actual friends.”
“For my next trick [took me a while to work that one out] I’ll be nailing virtually jelly…”
“Mostly, surfing seems to be…” or, alternatively, “Surfing mostly seems to be…”
“On actually uses” Oh come on, Andrew! Basic syntax error. Recode your validation routine before you compile this again!
I think you should get rid of the words “actual” and “actually” from these headings. It reads like a MySpace entry with them and flows much better when you omit them - like the “On Marketing” header does.
To stay on topic: I don’t get it either. MySpace? WasteOfSpace more like!
2. Adrian
I quite like “actual friends”. As opposed to MySpace Friends. (I have 2. I don’t know who they are.)
“Mostly sufing” was a cut and paste from the actual :) interview analysis (see link)
The “actually uses” was a cut and paste from the line above of “actually meeting”.
I have removed the actual/actually from the headings as I kind of agree with you on it being MySpacey, although I think my mind does work like that. I like prepending actual/actually to things.
Also in my defence their are so many lists and li, ul tags in the blog post, it was actually quite difficult to pick up typos and grammaros and spellingos which I an notoriously bad at anyway.
Back on topic, after talking to my boss about his teenage cousin/niece who uses it a lot I can see why people use it (teenagers have no taste anyway). However everyone thinks they can make money off it, and it appears only the founders actually will (IMvHO). I don’t think you can monetise buggery pooh out of it.
3. Lyle
Someone on Slashdot pointed this out about MySpace (credit where credit’s due)…
MySpace is valuable to Fox et al because it provides a database of 100 million 13-25 year olds who are willingly providing information about their interests.
One example given was for a movie that has a MySpace profile, and now has 60,000 “friends”. i.e. people who have established a connection to that movie, shown they are susceptible to advertising/marketing/hype, and provide a demographic. Those 60,000 (or whatever number) can now be direct-marketed the next Big Teen Movie™ purely because they showed an interest in this one.
Yeah, you can monetize that. Under “information that they wouldn’t give to market researchers, but will do in the name of ‘making friends’”
4. Dragon
I concur. Last weeks blatant marketing gimmick by Blizzard to give World of Warcraft its own WasteOfSpace page shows that. Hundreds, nay, thousands of people have signed up to be its friend.
I have no issue with this as long as they don’t try to be my friend too.
5. Destructor
Yeah dude you can’t argue the math- Myspace is ludicrously successful. I hate it, but to people who can’t code, it’s the #1 way to blog. It’s a networking device- you should be figuring out ways to exploit it, not just tearing it down because you know better.
6. Adrian
Everyone is looking at ways of exploiting it.
I’m tearing it down because it is painful on my eyes.
MySpace shows that if you drop the barrier to entry low enough you can attract just about anyone and anything.
I have no problems with the concept. just with the implementation. If YouTube & Flickr was this ugly I would tear down them too.
But Flickr (for example) dropped the barriers to entry on photo sharing/storing etc. very low too, but still is a beautiful site and a pleasure to use.
MySpace has a ludicrous large number of users. Is it successful? Well that depends on what your measure of success is. Anyone remember friendster ….
7. bReal
Great post. MySpace makes me crazy. I’ve only looked at MySpace pages a few times, almost all of those visits with my thirteen year-old niece. I just don’t see the appeal, but I am (yes, with a sigh) almost 30 years old, so what do I know?! However, with that said, I do know of quite a few people my age that have MySpace pages…all of whom I would easily declare as possessing social ineptness of some kind (insecurity, falsely inflated ego, etc.).
MySpace is, as you stated, an “eye-bleeding hellzone” for sure. Even my thriteen year-old niece complains about that. I know that many people will disagree with me on this but having a blog seems relatively healthy and cool…whereas having a MySpace page seems tacky and pathetic. Am I in denial?
Finally, and yet again, I’m with you wholeheartedly when you ask to be beaten with a barstool if you ever ask someone for their MySpace address at a bar!!!
8. Chris
I can’t fucking stand MySpace. It’s like GeoCities was 8 years ago, except with an even lower barrier to entry, and has also produced a whole slew of really, really terrible bands. And they’re getting worse: Arctic Monkeys were dull, overhyped but mostly inoccuous, whereas I would have to try very, very hard not to punch Sandi Thom in her self-righteous retro-loving technology-hating (except for the internet, obviously) face.
I hear rumours that Fox Corp are trying really hard to figure out how to monetize it. Good. My contempt for MySpace is only surpassed by my contempt and hatred for Murdoch himself.
9. Lyle
One interesting thing about Fox and MySpace concerns all the idiot teens trying to show how “sexy” they are etc., or being amateur pron stars.
Turns out that when they upload stuff to MySpace, it becomes the property of Fox/Murdoch, even once the user has ‘deleted’ it. So if a MySpace user (or ex-MySpace user) becomes ‘famous’ then Fox, News International et al can use those shots freely.
And of course News International includes such illustrious titles as The Sun, and News of the World. So they’d have no interest in this, of course…
10. Lyle
Oh, and by “famous” I mean ‘on Big Brother, or some other piece of shit reality programme’ as well as ‘doing anything in any way newsworthy’
I suspect it’d open them up for anything similar to Girl with a One-track Mind’s ‘outing’ and loss of anonymity. If she’d had a profile on MySpace, Sun, Times, NOTW, and Fox in general would’ve had pictures of her ASAP…
11. D
So when Shirleen (currently aged 15 1/2) gets a record deal on her knees, dances mostly naked on TV and sings about wanting sex the Sun can expose her for the slag she really is?
12. Destructor
This is brilliant- must watch. Don’t stop watching, it gets way funny by the end.
13. matthew
I just discovered yesterday they Ze is only doing The Show until the 17th of March next year. I’m sadder knowing this than I was when I didn’t know it.
14. Gert
I discovered the “MySpace” spaces (is that the terminology?) for the grandsons of my hero. Which has proved to be quite interesting, in a stalkerish sort of way.
But there is actually something worse than MySpace, and that is Piczo where my 10 year old nephew and his friends hang out and blog. And they love animated gifs, clunky cursors and I always end up with a crashed browser on Piczo