Last week News Corporation sold MySpace to advertising company Specific Media for $35 million. Approximately 6 years prior, News Corp. had bought MySpace for a considerably greater $580 million.
The social networking website once dominated the market, pioneering the networking experience and holding over 70 million active users. It generated more than $800 million in ad revenue in 2008 and grew almost 2300% in page views over 4 years according to digital measurement company comScore.
Its skyrocketing trend of success was suddenly thrown however, when an even more astronomically quick-growing network, Facebook, overtook it in 2009. Facebook began absorbing large portions of MySpace’s user base. Eventually, that base whittled down to around 50 million unique visitors per month based on estimates from Google analytics data, almost nothing compared to Facebook, now holding over 700 million active users.
Specific Media’s strategy at this point appears to be to capitalize on celebrity marketing, specifically through “The Social Network” actor Justin Timberlake, who now also owns a stake in MySpace. However, for MySpace to make a resurgence, it would have to be able to win back users who had left because they were convinced that Facebook was and is a superior service.
Facebook itself is also beginning to see a slowdown in growth. According to a report by digital consultant Inside Facebook, the social network lost 6 million American users in May. Users in other countries where Facebook has existed for a relatively long time have also seen losses.
Canada fell by 1.52 million users. The United Kingdom, Norway and Russia all reported losses over 100,000. While Facebook continues to see overall growth, most of that growth comes from emerging markets in countries where Facebook is young and relatively fresh. Regardless, the overall growth is still slowing down, offset by its losses.
The numbers indicate that there is potentially a correlation between the age of a social network and the rate of its decline. According to the report, “by the time Facebook reaches around 50% of the total population in a given country (plus or minus, depending on internet access rates in that country), growth generally slows to a halt, as we’ve noted before.”
This might be good news for MySpace, were it not for the fact that internet-search giant Google is making its own entry into the social networking world with Google+.
Despite having only been available since June 28, some several thousand people have had the chance to try Google+ and have voiced their opinions on its functionality and future through polls on popular tech and media publications.
In a running poll on androidpolice.com of over 2,600 voters, the majority at 47% voted for the option “I foresee G+ making it all the way to the top.” Below it were, “It will do better than [Google] Wave and [Google] Buzz, but it won’t be enough to unseat Facebook,” at 35%, and then “Waiting to see” at 14%, and the rest dissenting except for 1% “still using MySpace, brah.”
On internet, media, and tech news website Mashable, another running user poll gave almost identical results, with “I love it and absolutely can’t wait to play with it” garnering 47.18% of votes out of over 7,500 voters and 5 choices.
Finally, a running poll on the Christian Post with over 2,800 votes shows that 42.79% of voters believe that Google+ will “dethrone Facebook without a doubt,” over “Lose to Facebook,” at 14.65%, and “Co-exist with Facebook, like Pepsi and Coke,” at a close 42.56%.
These polls are unofficial, but assuming that the vast majority of these voters have actually tested Google+, early feedback would indicate that the service is enjoyable and will certainly draw some Facebook users to switch to or at least share use with Google+.
MySpace will need to overcome the fact that not only will it have to compete with a massive and dedicated user base from Facebook, which itself is beginning to show signs of burning out social networkers, but it will need to somehow keep itself in the spotlight as Google+ gains good remarks and intense buzz.
