All over the tech blogs today is a rumor that says that Yahoo! is interested in buying MySpace for 25% of its own stock ($10+ billion). Man, what a dumb thought.
The way I see it, and believe me, I’m an avid user, MySpace is going to die a slow, horrible death. But not before some schmucks throw another few billion down the drain thinking they’re on the ‘cutting edge‘ of marketing.
MySpace is still the big kid on the block for finding and friending new bands, for example. And a decent way to keep your friends posted on your happenings (although, damn, I wish you could change the size of the bulletin board, or grab a damn RSS feed now and again!).
The problem arises when MySpace’s marketing potential, slowly but surely, becomes a whore to its own medium and devours itself. I haven’t had a “real person” ask me to be their friend on MySpace in months. Everything I get is a band, a new company, a film, a new non-profit. Sure, I’ll friend up some of the good ones, but more and a couple of my friends are fed up with it. Sick of the ugliness of it all (both in design, but also in the mounting spam). Once MySpace gets completely spammed up, forget it. Once non-humans (read: non-consumers) invade the space, it loses value exponentially.
Spam will off MySpace for good. But the main reason MySpace will die is despite rampant calls for it to innovate, it does nothing but sluggishly plod along and play copy-cat. Facebook’s new API is the beginning of the end. All my friends are heading to VIRB.com.
Why a company like Yahoo! would think it’s a good idea to do the proverbial ‘friend up’ with the FOX brand is beyond me.
Tags: myspace, virb, social networking, marketing, yahoo!, trends
