(no subject)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charmianAs you may know, Myspace is in serious decline. It's still a large site, of course, but a shadow of its former self, and thusly, its revenues have also been declining. Because of this, Myspace has sort of decided to get back to its roots and re-define itself back to being a music network.
Now for some links and such:
Once a social network begins to decline, it is possible that this may provoke a death spiral. Metcalfe's law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the # of people using it. This results in network effects, and larger networks being more valuable than smaller ones. (However, some dispute the law as applied to the internet) This is why social networking services can experience blockbuster growth.
However, what if this happens in reverse? As fewer and fewer people use a social network, there is less and less value in it, prompting even fewer to use it. Then, the death spiral takes hold.
So what happened to Myspace? After all, as a social network, it had a better chance of continuing to consolidate than other social media sites. (According to that link, social networks are outpacing other forms of social media.)
Perhaps, in its remodeling, Myspace is following this theory, which states that social networks can arrest the death spiral if they focus on "pillars," things which, while valuable, don't move like users do. (In other words, less U2U (user to user) more U2P (user to pillar))
Anyway, in the last post I had linked to an article, which posited that Myspace's decline was caused not by FB merely being large, but also by the failure of Myspace to improve itself. This sounds very convincing to me. It's not enough for a site to merely keep a good uptime and continue providing what it has always been providing: it must keep up with the competition, and that means continuously improving things. When the competition is innovating and trying to improve the user's experience (using the site that is), a site cannot simply rest on its laurels.
Some quotes: "Facebook is preparing for that eventuality, to keep up with such trends and not lag behind better sites months after. MySpace failed to accept that what people look for in a site changes over time, as if the Internet never evolves. This hubris led to its downfall. "
← To not evolve in the face of competition is a form of foolishness or arrogance.
"Even when Tom did announce anticipated changes to how the system worked, they were hardly ever implemented on time."
← Doubtlessly, this caused users to feel less confidence about the site, and to feel something messed up was going on.
"Basic reluctance to change explains a lot. After all, MySpace was really popular when it first started, so why fix that which ain't (but actually really, really is) broken? "
← The problem with change is that nearly every status quo seems to have people invested in it, meaning there will be people who aren't happy about the changes. This is one reason why change may not be easy.
"No, its own failure to act and improve an ageing interface destroyed the site in the end. "
← improving the interface is very, very important. Maybe I'm just a shallow, aesthetics impressed person, but really, when I see a site up to the latest web aesthetics, that says to me that it's a site which is up to date, which is run by people paying attention to what's going on, who care about the user's experience using the site and usability. Which may or may not be correct, but that's not an entirely illogical way to feel, IMHO. Perhaps a social network, especially one used for casual/entertainment purposes, is like a hip restaurant or nightclub. Design cannot be ignored in such cases.
Now for some links and such:
Once a social network begins to decline, it is possible that this may provoke a death spiral. Metcalfe's law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the # of people using it. This results in network effects, and larger networks being more valuable than smaller ones. (However, some dispute the law as applied to the internet) This is why social networking services can experience blockbuster growth.
However, what if this happens in reverse? As fewer and fewer people use a social network, there is less and less value in it, prompting even fewer to use it. Then, the death spiral takes hold.
So what happened to Myspace? After all, as a social network, it had a better chance of continuing to consolidate than other social media sites. (According to that link, social networks are outpacing other forms of social media.)
Perhaps, in its remodeling, Myspace is following this theory, which states that social networks can arrest the death spiral if they focus on "pillars," things which, while valuable, don't move like users do. (In other words, less U2U (user to user) more U2P (user to pillar))
Anyway, in the last post I had linked to an article, which posited that Myspace's decline was caused not by FB merely being large, but also by the failure of Myspace to improve itself. This sounds very convincing to me. It's not enough for a site to merely keep a good uptime and continue providing what it has always been providing: it must keep up with the competition, and that means continuously improving things. When the competition is innovating and trying to improve the user's experience (using the site that is), a site cannot simply rest on its laurels.
Some quotes: "Facebook is preparing for that eventuality, to keep up with such trends and not lag behind better sites months after. MySpace failed to accept that what people look for in a site changes over time, as if the Internet never evolves. This hubris led to its downfall. "
← To not evolve in the face of competition is a form of foolishness or arrogance.
"Even when Tom did announce anticipated changes to how the system worked, they were hardly ever implemented on time."
← Doubtlessly, this caused users to feel less confidence about the site, and to feel something messed up was going on.
"Basic reluctance to change explains a lot. After all, MySpace was really popular when it first started, so why fix that which ain't (but actually really, really is) broken? "
← The problem with change is that nearly every status quo seems to have people invested in it, meaning there will be people who aren't happy about the changes. This is one reason why change may not be easy.
"No, its own failure to act and improve an ageing interface destroyed the site in the end. "
← improving the interface is very, very important. Maybe I'm just a shallow, aesthetics impressed person, but really, when I see a site up to the latest web aesthetics, that says to me that it's a site which is up to date, which is run by people paying attention to what's going on, who care about the user's experience using the site and usability. Which may or may not be correct, but that's not an entirely illogical way to feel, IMHO. Perhaps a social network, especially one used for casual/entertainment purposes, is like a hip restaurant or nightclub. Design cannot be ignored in such cases.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-10 10:43 pm (UTC)running a social network is like running a nightclub?
Date: 2009-11-11 07:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 03:53 pm (UTC)Was the MySpace interface ever up to date?
Years ago when I first came across it, it already turned me off as being too clutterd and too much of a reminder of how the Internet looked back in 1996
no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 06:17 am (UTC)Since I already had an LJ account when I first came upon MySpace I only joined it for a short time, and only to read the blog of a musican I liked