MySpace: New, Improved, and Growing
Back in the early-mid 2000’s when MySpace was at the peak of its popularity, it was the most visited social networking site in the world, even surpassing Google. In around 2009, it started its decline as it was eventually surpassed by newer social sites such as Facebook and MySpace continuously started to lose membership as people switched over to newer websites.
Even though it was such a popular social networking site, MySpace, like any other social networking site, is still vulnerable to losing necessary engagement. As more and more people switch to rising platforms like Facebook and Twitter, they are causing an information cascade. Their connections will be influenced to try out the newer sites and eventually stop using older sites like MySpace altogether if they like the newer sites better. According to the Appleton article linked at the bottom of this post, this is likely the case because rather than improving user experience, MySpace focused more on generating revenue from advertisements whereas newer sites like Facebook did a better job of engaging and improving user experience. Many people also may be influenced to switch to newer sites because they reason that other people are switching because they have more information about those sites that caused them to make the transition. Soon enough, almost no one uses MySpace and its past users have moved on to newer sites.
Because of this loss in engagement, MySpace, currently Myspace with a lowercase ‘s’, is now directing its focus on music and users interested in music. They revamped their website so that users can more effectively engage with each other through music. By improving user experience, Myspace is getting more engagement. This could be a result of direct-benefit effect. Due to the improvement in user experience and also by targetting a specific audience, people in that audience are more likely to start using Myspace again because now, they can benefit from using the site.