MySpace is dead and I blame Rupert Murdock.

The article can end right there. The point is made and few will argue. Unfortunately, I can’t stop.

After doing some research into the history of MySpace I realized something – it’s totally the fault of News Corp that the once-mighty social networking pioneer is going to be sold for parts in the coming months, maybe even weeks. We won’t go into the changes (or lack thereof) nor will we look at the commitment (or lack thereof) that News Corp put into MySpace. This was a huge squandering of something powerful and potentially beautiful.

Had News Corp gone in the right direction, we may not be so obsessed with Facebook or Twitter right now. Rupert Murdock killed off their only competition. Now we’re saying ByeSpace to MySpace.

Here’s what they did wrong:

MySpace Should Have Been A Leader, Not a Supporter

In 2005, the BBC reported that News Corp felt MySpace could drive traffic to the newly formed Fox Interactive Media.

Really, News Corp? Really? It should have been the other way around.

It’s like buying a Lamborghini to get the kids to school faster. The problem is they won’t all fit in the two-seater and even if they could, the Lamborghini doesn’t want to be used to drive kids to school. MySpace had the numbers but it wasn’t the right vehicle to try to drive traffic to Fox News or its variants.

Instead, the Lamborghini should have hit the open road and gone farther and faster than anyone else. It had the lead in the growing social media phenomenon. The market was there, and Fox News took them off the Autobahn and put them on city streets for some odd reason.

The Entertainment Hub: You Got Your Wish

There was speculation in 2005 that News Corp was planning on making MySpace a part of their emerging entertainment niche. Gigaom thought they were going after MTV. Others reported that they were trying to steer it towards being a television, music, and movie portal (which is sort of where they are now) to enhance their own ratings and generate buzz about their own shows.

History proves that you stick with what works until there are signs that it won’t work later. Facebook has stayed the course. YouTube has stayed the course. Twitter has stayed the course. MySpace has no idea what their original course was and they’re doing nothing to stay with it.

You got your wish. MySpace is now attempting to salvage what they have by becoming the place for Entertainment. There doesn’t seem to be a clear direction on what their place is in entertainment or how they’re going to beat their competition… which is another point – who is their competition now?

The waters have been muddied. Nobody knows for sure.

Money First, Money Last

The concept of buying MySpace was one that was likely not geared around straight direct profit. At the time, social media was not something that many considered high-profit. It was an emerging communication tool. For News Corp, it would have likely been seen as something that they hoped would make money but as long as it served its purpose they would support it financially even if it was in the red.

That changed quickly.

Not only was MySpace expected to turn a profit early on, it was expected to grow revenues. The very word “revenue” should have been eliminated from any discussion when they were bought. Had News Corp focused on building the site into a powerhouse, funding every last penny if necessary rather than expecting profits, they would likely have one of the most profitable websites in the world right now. They expected money too soon in a time when the money wasn’t there.

Facebook’s estimated $2 billion take in 2010 should have been going to MySpace and therefore News Corp. They weren’t hurting. It was like putting an 18-year-old to work to get money for the family now rather than investing in getting that kid a college degree so he could make a lot more money for the family later.

47% of the staff can attest to the “money last” part.

Is There a Future for MySpace?

No.

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Read more about social media on this social media blog or learn more about automotive social media here.

MySpace has been freeing up some “space” with plans of firing 47% of its staff, this seems like a clear sign of its final stages towards its demise.

MySpace’s current owner NewsCorp, may be looking to sell this sinking social network this coming June, first sign of this is firing 500 of its employees for a reconstruction by entering with local partnerships in the UK, Germany and Australia to manage advertising and content.

The social site became less social and more focused on its strength’s within the music and video industries after Mike Jones became Chief Executive Officer. They tried reviving the site by renewing an advertising pact with Google Inc last month. Even with more than 3.3 million new profiles created, and mobile users rising 4% between November and December to more than 22 million, MySpace will soon become a distant teenage memory.

“Today’s tough but necessary changes were taken in order to provide the company with a clear path for sustained growth and profitability,” Jones said in the statement. “These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product.”

After the full reconstruction takes place, the once known MySpace will be up for grabs to private equity firms and possibly Yahoo Inc. by this coming June.

MySpace was once a frontier in the social media realm, paving the way for the likes of Facebook and YouTube. Unfortunately due to too much user control, auto-playing songs and over crowded pages, MySpace lost its appeal and since then has been replaced.

Like anything that stamps our history or ingrains itself within a memory, it was once a place where teens could socialize, undiscovered artists could express themselves and a beginning towards a road that then we could not foresee, the road towards Social Media.

Now it’s the beginning of an end.

Now is the time to say Goodbye to MySpace.

Will you be sad to see MySpace go?

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Read more Social Media stories on our blog

A new segment of the Social Blade Show was launched this week. The “Social Blitz” portion of the show goes over some of the news from the week in social media in a short, overview-based report. Here’s the first. What do you think?

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Read more about social media on this Social Media Blog.

So, you’re not sold. You still believe that sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are passing fads that will fall to oblivion by 2010.  While I do believe that some sites will come and go, grow and dissolve, there is zero doubt that social media as a whole will continue to grow to the point that it encompasses most of our daily interactions.

It is ever-becoming a more important part of our lives. This video below puts it all into perspective. Thanks to @murnahan for showing it to me and @equalman for making it. Great stuff.

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Read more on this social media blog.

Everyone knows a nerd or two.  Do you know the top nerds in the world, and by top, I mean the people who took visionary nerdiness, elbow grease, and luck and translated it all into billion dollar companies?  Below, you will find 15 faces (nine singles, 3 doubles).  Most readers will be able to name 3 or 4.  Real techies can name 5-10.  If you can name more, you are a true guru.  All 15?  Well, there’s a special place for you.

To get the answers, simply place your mouse over the image until the alt tag pops up.  If it doesn’t, scroll down to the list of answers with links to the source stories where the pictures were found.  Are you ready?  Can you…

Name that Nerd?

#1

“We’ve done a lot but we are still a small company, just over 300 employees. There are a lot of interesting things happening in that space, however don’t know when it’s going to be, and as a small company we have to prioritize things. Something for the future.”

#2

“We had to use all of our credit cards and our friends’ credit cards and our parents’ credit cards.”

“Research on the Web seems to be fashionable these days and I guess I’m no exception.”

#3

“I admit that when I think of the money one could make from all this, I get a little twinge. But I’m pretty happy with nerd values: Get yourself a comfortable living, then do a little something to change the world.”

#4

“We ought to be looking at business as a force for good.”

“I was just pursuing what I enjoyed doing. I mean, I was pursuing my passion.”

“I’ve got a passion for solving a problem that I think I can solve in a new way. And that maybe it helps that nobody has done it before as well.”

#5

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”

“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”

#6

“I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you’re trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you’re giving it away.”

#7

“But the idea that some day people would want to be able to interact and get stock quotes and talk with other people or all these different things, I just believed that was going to happen.”

“One of the biggest challenges we had in the first decade was not that many people had personal computers. There weren’t that many people to sell to, and it was hard to identify them.”

#8

“As a business, if you cannot change the law, follow the law.  Respect the local government. We’re not interested in politics. We’re just focused on e-commerce.”

“It helps a ton when you learn people’s names and don’t butcher them when trying to pronounce them.”

#9

“I think there’s a lot of niches out there that aren’t being filled — say, hundreds of thousands of people who want to learn how to cross stitch. I can’t say we’re going to make that show, but there would be an audience for it online. For us, it’s been gradually expanding out from the tech and geek genre; we have a music show now, and we’ve got a bunch of good shows coming up later this year.”

#10

“I tend to see people trying to do stuff that is an uphill struggle.  Pay attention to what works, and do that.”

“It sounds crazy, but even in the first plan that I wrote up, I mentioned AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail, knowing we would be big. And it’s crazy to think that it happened.”

#11

“A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.”

#12

“I see our service as one that’s been needed for a long time. The pieces to make it all happen just weren’t in place until we came around.”

“We needed it to be a no-brainer.”

“We allowed the community to tell us what was entertaining them.”

“We are building a community, and we don’t want to bombard people with advertising.”

And the Answers… 

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1- Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder

2- Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google Founders

3- Craig Newman, Craigslist Founder

4- Pierre Omidyar, eBay Founder

5- Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder

6- Bill Gates, Microsoft Founder

7- Steve Case, AOL Founder

8- Jerry Yang, Yahoo Founder

9- Kevin Rose, Digg Founder

10- Tom Anderson and Steve DeWolfe, MySpace Founders

11- Steve Jobs, Apple Founder

12- Chad Hurley and Steven Chen, YouTube Founders

Hope you enjoyed this little game, and I hope you scored well!  Go back to the Soshable homepage if you would like.

Is it you?  Are you the one who clicks on the banner ads on social media and social networking sites like Digg, MySpace, Reddit, Facebook, Propeller, and everywhere else (except Mixx, where I haven’t really seen them yet)?  I’ve been looking for whoever it is that still thinks they’re the 9,999th visitor or that they really just won a free Xbox 360.  When I find this person, I have one word.

Stop.

It’s 2008.  Banner advertisements, as wonderful and beautiful as they were before the turn of the millenium, are now worthless.  Or are they?  They still seem to be on just about every website (this one included, though I don’t know why I bother since nobody clicks on them).  I would think that most people, especially the astute, tech-saavy readers of social media and users of social networks, are immune to them and barely register that they’re even there.

Throw in adblocker plug-ins, and one would think that this arcane form of advertising generates pennies per million impressions.  Since smarter people than me run most of these sites, I can assume that someone, somewhere, is still clicking on banner advertisements to get their $9.99 unlimited email (WOOHOO!).  Please, for the love of Al Gore…

Stop!

Here’s an alternative.  Instead of trying to lure us “unwitting simple folk” into getting a free cell phone, why don’t advertisers and websites just come out and say it.  Here’s what I would love to see on a site:

This Website brought to you Banner-Free by our Sponsors.

We know you probably won’t click on them, but at least read their names for branding purposes.

If you happen to be in the market for a cell phone, new shoes, or cheap airline tickets, remember the websites who happily pay us money so we can deliver this site to you without seizure-inducing banner ads:

Link to Sponsor 1 – Description of sponsor 1

Link to Sponsor 2 – Description of sponsor 2

yadayadayada – yadayadayada

Wasn’t that simple?  Can you picture it?  More importantly, wouldn’t you be more willing to actually see who it is that is making the website free for you to browse, use, and enjoy?  Remove the banners, replace it with a “blogroll” style of advertising, and in the end, we might actually click on something just as a reward.

This can never happen if people continue to reward the banner advertisers with clicks.  If you’re one of them, please…

STOP!

Now where are banners acceptable?  On websites that are designed to sell stuff such as this Washington DC Nissan dealer. 

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Read more annoyances and general rants (though few they are) at Soshable, or check out one recent post that we liked at Facebook User Data Gathering Goes Viral.  Check out some of our social media recommendations.

When I told someone that I wrote for a blog that covers social media, social networks, and social bookmarking, their first question was “What’s all that?”  When I told them what it was and gave them examples, the next question made me laugh.

“Who is Tom and how did he get so many MySpace friends?”

With over  220 million friends, Tom Anderson is everyone’s first MySpace friend.  You can read his MySpace Profile or even the entry about him on Wikipedia.  This story isn’t about him, though.

The MySpace vs. Facebook battle has been raging for a while, but the direction that the company is heading is bringing attention from a whole new batch of foes.  Companies like Yahoo! and AOL are taking note as News Corp. pushes the idea of having MySpace act as more than just a social network.  They want it to be everything to their users — a first stop from which to turn on their laptop and launch their daily Internet adventure and whatever it yields.

They want it to be a portal portal page.

This strategy, often discussed on blogs but rarely analyzed, seems to be the best way to take a website with over 1 billion daily page views and get it over the $1 billion yearly revenue mark.  Actually, they’ll probably hit that number this year even if they don’t change ($800 million in 2007) but the goals are probably much higher.

MySpace is positioned properly, but they are going to have to accelerate changes because of the pressure on many fronts.  Facebook is making many strides despite the Beacon debacle and questions about user data tracking.  MySpaceTV has met moderate success, but far below expectations because of YouTube’s momentum.  With the portal sites able to focus on their products more feverishly, it appears that MySpace has one real option.

Advertise Tom.

As the official unofficial face of the company, they need to start marketing online and offline and put him in front of as many people as possible.  Have Tom watching exclusive shows on MySpaceTV.  Have Tom searching for finding products through MySpace advertising.  Let Tom send a message to all of his friends, then pan out to hear the world getting a unified ping.  Make Tom more viral than he already is.

Innovations will happen, but MySpace is having to fight through two bad names in the social media and networking worlds: their own and their parent company’s.  Both get bashed regularly.  It’s time to draw focus away from the bad offer a friendly face that millions already recognize for the rest of the world to see.

Recent changes to the way that MySpace protects teens has been met with some positive buzz, but they have to continue.  They need an image revamp in the same vein as the old “Softer Side of Sears” campaign.  “MySpace is better, safer, and has more. Come see!”.  That should be the message.

Otherwise, the “MySpace Refugee” camps will grow and the flow of new users will eventually slow.  Are there other ways?  Of course!  This is just one thought.

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For more articles about social networking, click the link that you just passed.

There has been a trend that has been percolating behind the scenes.  While Facebook and MySpace cultivate their mass presence by making the world accessible to people and people accessible to the world, Ning is bringing laser-precision focus to social networking, allowing the niche aspect of internet interaction to flourish.

While the social networking powerhouses offer limited platforms for people to form groups and interact with like-minded people, Ning has made it their purpose to offer flexibility in their product.  As the self-proclaimed “Home Depot” of social networking, Ning has a do-it-yourself platform (“you can do it, we can help”) that is simple to use and manipulate.  A person can create an account and start a social network geared around whatever they want in a few minutes.

In many ways, this is the way of the future for social networking.  People tired of the big-box mentality of Facebook and MySpace, where monetization of their tremendous user bases seems to be the top priority, can focus their efforts on building their own network that targets others with the same interests.

There are many nice features on every social network, but one thing that makes Ning very strong is the ability to use the platform on one’s own domain.  There is a free option that uses ning.com sub-domains, but with a little effort and a $4.95 per month pricetag, users can park their network anywhere they want.

Ning users can create networks that go after people in the same area, profession, interests, or whatever they want.  Here is a sample of some networks currently on Ning that exemplifies the infinite variety potential:

• Horse enthusiasts can network with over 700 other enthusiasts at Show My Pony.
• I don’t speak Spanish, but 233 people obviously can at TVCocina.  If food is a universal language, the videos here will definitely make you hungry.
• Over 11K firefighters are members of Firefighter Nation.  Tons of videos, blog posts, and images.
• Shanghai has its own network with nearly 1200 users featuring local events, nightlife and more.
• In automotive, there is a car dealer network with over 120 members that discusses honesty in selling.
• Mothers, there’s a social network for you.  With over 1000 members, Mommy2Mommy is a place for parental sorority.
• Alumni organizations are taking hold on Ning.  Hawk Talk is a place for JP Alumni to reconnect.

The possibilities on Ning are nearly limitless.  There are drawbacks.  Porn has started creeping in and it’s been making the news.  Spam is prevalent, with people joining and posting on dozens of networks.  It makes it to where you either have to keep a close eye as an administrator or risk Viagra stories hitting your pages.  Still, it’s far less daunting than the larger players.

In the near future, expect to see more business, organizations, and charities start to take advantage of the potential.  Niche Social Networking is growing and should experience exponential traffic spikes within the year.

This really isn’t a question of Facebook vs. MySpace. It’s a question of Alexa.com vs. Compete.com.

According to Alexa, Facebook jumped ahead of MySpace last week to technically take the #6 spot. While it hasn’t changed on the official Alexa Top 500, a close examination of the line graph comparison shows the too big dogs in social networking neck and neck on Novemeber 20 and 21. Facebook jumped ahead by a small margin after that.

Compete.com paints a completely different picture. Despite the slower updates, MySpace still have a huge lead lead in October, 2007. It shows MySpace at 65 million versus Facebook’s 24 million.

The trends over the last several months have shown both websites growing in traffic sporadically over the last year, but Facebook seems to be making bigger gains. That could change, as Facebook Beacon, their new user-data-driven advertising program, has drawn a tremendous amount of heat from users, critics, and watchdog groups since its launch this month.

This all brings up three questions:

1) Will the increase in revenue be sufficient to compensate for Facebook’s “loss of face”?

2) If Facebook succeeds, will MySpace follow with a similar ad platform of their own? (perhaps they’ve already starting it)

3) Who’s right, Compete.com or Alexa.com, and why is there such a discrepancy?

*Bonus Question* – Does anyone really care outside of the financial driving forces behind the websites in question?

*Bonus Answer* – Probably not, but it’s interesting nonetheless.