What If You Threw A Party And No One Came? Myspace Is Dead.
Right about now, Justin Timberlake must feel like he has egg on his face. In June of 2011, Justin Timberlake and Specific Media bought Myspace.com and began to retune the website to place more of an emphasis on music. Myspace now features popular and up and coming musical artists and if you did not know that, it is no surprise: Myspace.com has fallen to the 88th Top Site in the U.S., below The Drudge Report and CBS Sports.
Even in its heyday, Myspace was not exactly a haven of Internet security. More than suffering from spreading viruses, Myspace users found the Internet security threat of stalkers. As the first online social network for many users, Myspace users quickly found that the key component to Internet security is simply not putting deeply personal information about yourself on your page. As well, the lax Internet security measures on Myspace allowed adult predators to gain access to children eighteen and younger.
In addition to basic Internet security concerns embodied by Myspace publishing users’ birthdays and birthplaces, which allowed some crafty criminals to divine portions of users’ social security numbers, Myspace users have found there is simply no good reason to go back to Myspace. Unlike other social network sites that provide archives for online storage, Myspace encouraged users to link to external sites. As a result, Myspace quickly turned into a portal to other, cooler sites, as opposed to one where users built an online storage depot of their own, cool works.
It is clear that Justin Timberlake is trying to change that now. But intensifying the Internet security to Myspace and rebranding the site as an online storage option for the music and music videos of musical artists has not turned around Myspace’s slide in popularity. The artists who are using Myspace as an online storage venue often repost their music and videos to other sites, leaving little unique content to draw users back.
More than Internet security concerns and the desire to combine social networking with online storage, a hook that photo sharing social networks have found effective, much of the demise of Myspace simply comes from the fact that it is not cool anymore. Social networking is following the same long term ebb and flow of every trend and it is clear that Myspace is in the unenviable flow wherein the network is not cool to mainstream users. Counterculture users are not yet using Myspace, even ironically.
Justin Timberlake is just a victim of bad timing, buying into a network that has already jumped the shark. More than fear of Internet security threats or the desire to start up an online storage folder on a network that they have already left, users are stating that they are happy to get their music on other sites and no amount of rebranding Myspace will make them come back.
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