Poor poor MySpace. I can’t say that I didn’t see this coming. I used to be an avid MySpace user for many years. I have about 95 pictures uploaded to it, a streaming video of photos of me and my friends, a chosen song for my profile page, writing bulletins and notes, and prodding almost 20,000 page views. I was proud of my site, but with the integration of Facebook, I slowly stepped away from that social network and moved towards newer things. It wasn’t all at once, which is why this is just starting to hit MySpace especially hard now. I check my MySpace possibly once a month. I check my Facebook once an hour. That is just the way it is and unfortunately for MySpace that’s the way it is for a lot of people right now.

Previously back in 2006 when MySpace was the leading social networking, they signed a three year, 900 Million dollar advertising contract with Google which in turn made Google the exclusive search advertiser on MySpace. At the time this was a great opportunity for Google, this was when MySpace was the number one social network. However, now, since MySpace did not reach their minimum traffic requirement for the agreement, they will in turn owe Google 100 million dollars.

MySpace is taking its punches. Realizing that they are no longer going to be a place where friends and families connect and stay connected. They are now going to begin focusing on their music pages. Hundreds of thousands of music pages made my unsigned and signed artists to display tour information, release songs, pictures, and interact with fans still exist and are still doing well because there is nothing else out there like it. MySpace understands that it will never be Facebook and will never be Twitter, and quite frankly it’s not trying to be them.

I hope that they can break free from close to demise and bring themselves up by immersing themselves as an entertainment outlet. The incorporation of video onto their music sites might boost traffic, or it could fail horribly up against the over power shadow of YouTube. What lies ahead for MySpace, will the bounce back from this traffic short fall? Only time will tell.


You can read the full article via Wired: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/myspace-traffic-drop-costs-news-corp-about-100-million/

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