Sep
MySpace is Finished
I hadn’t logged onto my MySpace page in several months. I saw via email that I received a message from a friend I had not spoken with in quite a long time in MySpace so I decided to login to see her message. As I logged into MySpace, the only thing that I could do was shake my head in disgust.
When I first registered on MySpace several years ago, I thought it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen in cyberspace. A place where you can communicate with friends, meet new people with common interests as well as listen to music that you could not find on regular radio. As I logged in today, what I saw was a once proud neighborhood in cyberspace now turned into a sleazy back alley filled with nothing other than porn and spam.
As I said, I had not logged into MySpace in quite a while so I had several hundred messages in my inbox. Out of 107 unread messages, 100 of them were spam from profiles that no longer existed. There were 17 new comments posted, 10 of them were spam of one kind or another including a guy selling iPhones and a couple of links that went to spyware sites.
As I was deleting these messages, I was really excited when several new pop-up advertisements were served to me, beating my pop-up blocker and causing several new daughter windows to be opened. Nice MySpace, good idea to serve pop-up ads to the people who are most important to you – your users.
I thought maybe since I was already logged in, I might check out the music section and see if there was any new music that interested me. Unfortunately, I tried to click on several different links and each link brought me to that error page that says the MySpace team has been notified of the problem. Could you imagine if someone was actually getting notified each time there was an error on MySpace? The guy would never have a second to sleep, let alone eat or go to the bathroom.
As I surfed around, I looked at the advertisements that was on MySpace. They were all the same things. “Click here to get a free iPhone”. “Which rapper is this a picture of?” “Get a free ringtone today!”. All the lowest kind of advertising by the lowest kind of advertisers.
It’s really sad to be honest with you. MySpace was such a great idea and had so much potential and possibilities. Unfortunately, the founders got rich and Fox would not understand social media if it walked up to them and introduced himself. I finally made a decision that I think it is not in my best interest to have a profile on MySpace anymore. I decided to send some last emails to friends with my email address so they can contact me outside of MySpace.
Tom, you are not my friend anymore and I hope all that money you guys got from Fox will ease the pain of knowing just what you could of accomplished and just how far you guys have fallen.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.marketinghipster.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
September 21st, 2007 at 3:33 am
It’s funny when the offline companies try to bridge the gap to online.
Particularly those that made it in media related services. They defined the rules in their day, which this no longer is…
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:18 pm
I know how you feel, and the same is happening in other social networks.
But meh, it was inevitable.
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:23 pm
The same thing will happen on Facebook in the near future, I bet. Now it is said to be different, but who knows how long this differentiated status will last?
September 24th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
[...] bad…
Thanks. I received a great deal of email from folks who had thoughts on my previous post, MySpace is Finished. Unfortunately, I wrote something that generated a lot of interest and my database craps out on me [...]
September 25th, 2007 at 10:09 am
My personal profile seems to be collecting spiderwebs, but when I log on, my bulletin section is alive and well, driven by a select group of female myspace addicts and survey-takers. I think there are certian “neighborhoods” within myspace that are thriving. It all depends on your group. As always, you get back what you put in.
September 25th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
true
September 25th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
I can understand why this would make you angry. But nothing like this has happened to me yet. A couple of my friends have been hacked, yes, but they changed their passwords and now everything is fine. I haven’t gotten a spam comment or message in months and there hasn’t been a server failure as bad they used to be in a long time. And advertisements are inevitable. MySpace has to make it’s money somehow so it can remain free. Maybe I’m just one of the lucky ones who hasn’t had a real problem with MySpace yet. But for the past three years that I’ve had it, I’ve been pretty happy with it. Even with the changes. I’ve moved a few times and have been able to keep in touch with people that really matter to me. And without MySpace, I probably wouldn’t have done so very well. Anyhow, I hope you find something better for your time than MySpace anyway. It can get kind of addicting
September 25th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
So, to say it shortly, I agree with you Carson.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:44 am
I have seen these pop-up ads also and couldn’t believe they had sunken that low. I think all the low level advertising is probably a response to all the business they have lost to facebook.
Although facebook may not be as innocent as they seem. Pretty much all these silly and useless ‘appz’ are made by third parties who really have no obligation not tell sell your information. I’d tread very carefully with those things.
That is the one thing, in my opinion, that Myspace still has over Facebook. Things like profile videos and uploading music are integrated right into your profile whereas with facebook they have to be installed from third parties. I would definitely like to see a better solution for musicians on Facebook.
October 26th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
[...] MySpace is Finished by Cord Silverstein (self described as an interactive marketer, friend of children, small animals and Deadheads) describes how the brand has disappointed him and walked away from everything it stood for in the beginning. [...]
November 1st, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I think the Captcha is killing Myspace too! It is annoying and time consuming.
December 10th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
myspace sucks always has always will. It’s pages are too cluttered and poorly designed. The concept was good and highly personalized but users do not know what’s good for them and fill it up with garbage. The site also sucks because its hard to use. I set it up just fine but if you want to do anything cool you go through a million loops. Facebook owned myspace and Tom is definitely a douche bag
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:18 am
I think MySpace was finished even a few years ago when absolutely new kinds of ideas started to appear in thoughts and brains of creators.
I must say that for about a year ago we had almost a revolution in Russian Internet when absolutely new kind of resources came to us – social resources. I must say now that even a revolution idea will be finished sometime..and that is going with MySpace and other resources very long ago..and there is nothing strange.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Yeah, I’ll agree with you on this one. Myspace is stupid. I used to go to it all the time and now I dont know when the last time I logged on was. After facebook added the widgets it kinda killed myspace. Facebooks advertising isnt as annoying as myspace’s is. anyways, take care…