MySpace's Melting Makes Murdoch Mad 346
Barence writes "Facebook has overtaken rival social network MySpace for the first time — provoking an angry outburst from Rupert Murdoch, the man who paid $580m for MySpace only three years ago."
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MySpace's Melting Makes Murdoch Mad
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Maybe it's because (Score:5, Insightful)
People are tired of being linked to a page that has crappy layout, crappy embedded video or music that plays automatically, is full of lolspeak and/or textype, and is so random that it makes a schizophrenic feel confused.
oh wait.......
Boohoo (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh the joys of investing in a fad. I find it hard to feel for Murdoch. The years when such ventures were risk-free no-brainers are ca. 10 years past (if they ever existed).
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
hey murdoch (Score:5, Insightful)
friendster
xanga
geocities
tripod
etc.
and don't worry about facebook, in a few short years, it too will be a hasbeen, replaced by whatever site is the new trend
social networking sites are nothing but trends. they have the limelight for a few years, then they fade. think of them as the bell bottoms and ankle warmers and member's only jackets of the web. here today, master of everything, gone tomorrow, utterly forgotten
so how do you make money off of them?
you make money off of social networking sites by becoming extremely powerful, then seducing some tragically unhip media conglomerate to buy you for gabazillions, then you sleep all day and party all night
so congratulations murdoch, you have a place in "new media" after all: the patsy left holding the bag
Who would've thought (Score:5, Insightful)
That investing extremely large sums of money based on the momentary whims of teenagers and early twenty-somethings wasn't such a great idea? The winds of the internet can shift in an instant, and it seems like Murdoch hasn't caught on to that yet. Of course, it won't be long before The Next Big Thing comes along, and Facebook will be in the same spot that MySpace is right now.
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:5, Insightful)
All of these sorts of things tend to collapse under their own weight. When they start out, they're being created by people who are passionate about it and doing it because they care/enjoy working on it. Then it grows and more people sign up and suddenly there's a potential for some money to be made exploiting it. And that's what happens. The advertisers and spammers move in in full force, deals are made in order to afford all the new servers needed to keep up with traffic, and more and more people keep joining just because their friends told them they should.
The ratio of signal to noise gets skewed to the point where it becomes hard to use, and that combined with the general fickleness of people (especially the younger people that make up a significant portion of the userbase), means that the eyeballs go elsewhere. And at the end of the day, nothing that myspace or facebook or any social networking site does is really all that complicated. There are plenty of other websites out there that are offering ways to communicate with other people.
I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but the churn and turn over seems to be pretty consistent. Before facebook everyone talked about myspace. Before myspace everyone talked about orkut. Before orkut everyone talked about livejournal, etc... All those sites still exist, but today facebook is the one that people are writing headlines about. A couple years down the line some new upstart will be getting all the attention. It's just the way it is, and investing in one of these sites like it's going to be the next amazon or google is pretty silly.
MySpace Can't Handle Demand (Score:2, Insightful)
MySpace is already slow with the existing demand. If they manage to gain more visitors, the situation will only get worse. Add some servers and cleanup the horrible HTML.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, that's because Rupert is the Evil (tm) owner of Fox News (Faux for lefties), so anything that makes him look More Evil (TM)(C) is okay.
Duh!
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:5, Insightful)
just maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
If myspace pages didn't suck so bad, there wouldn't be a problem. I don't even consider Facebook and MySpace rivals. Facebook is so far beyond MySpace, it isn't even worth discussing.
Facebook's days are numbered, I'm sure. Something will come along to replace it in the next couple of years...unless it is able to evolve.
Re:hey murdoch (Score:5, Insightful)
You speak truth, but the hard reality here is the 500 million plus that Murdoch paid for MySpace was an absolute steal.
If Facebook is valued at $15 billion, it's very safe to assume that MySpace is worth at least half that. Odds are it's closer to twice that but, even with this hyper-unrealistically conservative measure, it's clear that Murdoch made a good investment.
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither of them will disappear entirely. One isn't going to crush the other. What's going to happen is that the masses will get tired of both of them, and move on to something new. There will still be some plenty of diehards who refuse to switch, and most of their current users will still keep and check on their accounts every once-in-a-while. But the bulk of the daily traffic will move to some newer, lightweight site that has a couple of novel ideas/features. And that site will be the big thing until it gets too bloated and tired, and then the cycle will repeat itself again.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking of alliteration, I think one reason why MySpace is doomed to play second fiddle is because it's simply harder to say to someone that you put your pictures "on my MySpace page" than "on my Facebook page."
Or maybe I'm just being silly, who knows.
Interesting bit of irony, that (Score:5, Insightful)
Having that statement applied TO Rupert Murdoch, rather than BY Rupert Murdoch.
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:3, Insightful)
"The advertisers and spammers move in in full force, deals are made in order to afford all the new servers needed to keep up with traffic"
In my experience, once the profiteering mentality starts, website costs have absolutely nothing to do with increased advertising and commercialisation.
Unless you're running a site like youtube or a warez site etc., server & bandwidth costs are never that significant and a simple unobtrusive banner ad or 'donate' button pays for it. It's people trying to convince investors their website is soon to make billions that leads to the ad spamming and "premium service" rubbish.
Re:Maybe it's because (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So it has the bigger dick. So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you're vastly overestimating the number of people who actually care enough and know enough to do this.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:5, Insightful)
You just summed up almost all businesses in general, not just social networking ones.....
Am I the only one who saw this one coming? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:0, Insightful)
Why in the fuck is this +4 Insightful? All he did was reword the parent post, you stupid fucks.
Re:A shill for the State gets his just deserts (Score:3, Insightful)
"Rupert Murdoch has made his millions by becoming a shill for the State. That's a given. He promotes big, lovely government, and he was paid well by the Powers that Be."
I can't stand Murdoch one bit, but that is just complete & utter rubbish. Who are these "Powers that Be"? the Bavarian Illuminati?
In reality, he's "paid well" by all the suckers like you & me who pay for over-priced Fox, Foxtel, Sky and the plethora of other cable/satellite TV companies he part-owns.
Huh!? He Made his money back! (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of the comments I'm seeing assume that Murdoch somehow lost money on the deal. In reality after he bought MySpace: "On August 8, 2006, search engine Google signed a $900 million deal to provide a Google search facility and advertising on MySpace."
And I'm sure that's not the only way MySpace has made Murdoch even richer.
That's because MySpace is a corporate sellout.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I hope the exceedingly greedy and decrepit Murdoch never learns the ropes of new media and pisses all his money away trying to get a piece of that pie. Too much to wish for though.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't revel in being a defender of big media, but those who pan Fox News never seem to understand what they're criticizing. Fox's primetime lineup consists of personality-driven opinion shows. They've got a right-leaning megalomaniac, a debate show, and a liberal who have control over the content and accuracy of their respective shows. It was a novel thing on a 24/7 news channel when Murdoch started it, and I think it has a place in the discourse. If and when that discourse lacks value, the host is to blame.
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just the way it is, and investing in one of these sites like it's going to be the next amazon or google is pretty silly.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fox news isn't doing anything different from NBC, CBS and ABC. Most notably, exploding trucks, and fake documents. And these are the cases where they got caught.
I'd rather get my news and opinions from people who are knowingly biased, than from people who try to say that they are reporting the news unbiasedly. At least I know the slant, and it makes it easier to dismiss the BS.
The point is, take the news you get with a grain of salt, no matter what your source is. Additionally, get your news from a variety of Points of View, as the truth usually lies (pun intended) in between.
The only idiots I know, get all their news from single sources. They don't listen to alternative views because they can't actually use their heads to filter the news. This goes to both lefties and righties.
I also suggest that if you're railing against "Faux News", that you also rail against the others that end up doing the same thing, manufacturing "news" and "facts".
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:4, Insightful)
Sites collapse under their own weight when people get greedy. If the advertising remains reasonable the provider can make money and have some longevity.
That's not about Fox News (Score:1, Insightful)
Your links are about a lawsuit against a local affiliate of the Fox Television Network, not Fox News. A couple of local TV reporters didn't like the way their station edited a story they did, so they sued and lost. The story never aired.
There's no need to misrepresent the truth in order to criticize Fox News. There's plenty of real stuff they actually do that you can criticize.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that there's consistent support from the hosts on one side of the debate, thus making it invariably two on one.
And that's ignoring that their NEWS shows also show rampant bias, poor to nonexistant fact-checking, and deliberate propaganda reporting, as well as just plain dirty tricks (Such as their constant "Obama/Osama" name slip-ups. I'm not saying that they can't have pundits, I'm saying that their regular newscasters, who are positioned as NEWSCASTERS, are engaging in propaganda and punditry while claiming to be delivering factual and unbiased coverage.
As for Keith Olberman... even while delivering an opinion column, the man has an infinitely better record on vetting his sources and producing factual, correct news than Fox News ever has. That's a bad sign, that is.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does this have to do with it. They went to court and Newscorp lawyers argued that their program "which they call news" had the right to broadcast information they knew was false and the right to fire journalists with enough integrity to refuse. Whatever else that makes them, it is completely untrustworthy as a source for facts.
Who picks the hosts? Who fires the people who refuse to tell lies. Sorry, you can't shift the blame away from a corporation that is not trying to inform, but persuade. They just aren't news.
Re:it was worth the money (Score:3, Insightful)
There are other ways to success... some of them involve giving up potential revenue.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
``Republican'' is synonymous with ``American'' now? Who are you, Joe McCarthy?
Re:hey murdoch (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds oddly like /., except without the Google ads. Seriously, we can "friend" and "foe" each other, we can write journals, we're rude, unhip, quite outdated. Though we might miss the technologically outdated bit in topic, but /. is hitting web 2.0 when 2.0 is now something like 2.1337, so we might count on that regard. /. is the Mybookfacespace of the FUTURE!
Either that or we can all get Angelfire/Geocities pages again.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:1, Insightful)
English English tends to restrict 'mad' to 'insane'; 'mad' meaning 'angry' is more of a North American English usage.
google is here until (Score:3, Insightful)
someone figures out how to search better than them. that's what brought google here: they did search better than the juggernauts of 1999: yahoo, altavista, etc.
if google is smart, they will remain focused on their core competency, and not get distracted with secondary pursuits, and have their entire relevancy stolen from them from under their feet. but the thing is, google is human endeavour. all human endeavours make mistake and fade
it may indeed take a decade or two, but there will come a time when google's lustre will fade to black. perhaps it will be in a time when the very idea of "internet search" is an antiquated concept. what i just said, that "internet search" might lose its relevancy, may seem to put the date of google's death many decades from now, but it actually brings google's date of death much closer
if you consider the pace of technological change, that could be only a decade away, when the concept of "internet search" is antiquated. you may consider that statement preposterous, but lets put it this way: if someone came up to you in 1988 and said the most darling company in the entire world in 2008 would be dedicated to something called "internet search", you would just stare at them like they were a maniac
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or he wanted to believe the piece, so that he didn't bother getting second sources or anything of the sort. Followed by CBS hounding an old lady to get her to say she did write the letter, even when it became clear it was a forgery.
Sorry, but I have no sympathy for Rather. He should have been shit-canned for sticking to the story even as it was falling apart around him, along with his producer and reporters.
Its one thing to report biased new, its another to try and throw an election. I suspect that the fallout caused Kerry to lose a few votes and maybe even the election.
As I said in another post, one doesn't have to lie to win. One doesn't have to lie to make GWB look like an idiot, he's very good at doing it himself.
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:3, Insightful)
Incredible (Score:2, Insightful)
"* blending opinion with news and calling it objective
putting only one political view on the air and calling themselves "balanced"
reporting as factual news (and almost verbatim) the "talking points" released by the GOP"
I hate to tell you this, Anonymous Coward, but people have been blending opinion with News since people have been doing news. Humans aren't Vulcans, they aren't robots. They have opinions, and that's always going to color journalism to one extent or another. In your righteous anger, I don't see you condeming Keith Olbermann and MSNBC. I don't see you condemning Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert (yes, I know they have comedy shows, but face it, more twentysomethings get their news from those two than from CNN or FOX or the New York Times. Jon Stewart's protests aside, he is a major news source now).
You seem to be mainly pissed that an opinion you don't like is popular at one network. That's mighty greedy of you, considering that every other broadcast/cable news source is considered either centrist or left leaning. And before you start bitching about Talk Radio, it's audience isn't as big, and the fault of Air America's failure isn't due to any conspiracy; even liberal listeners think the network sucks. You guys fix it, and then get back to us on talk radio. Besides, you do have NPR, which is pretty popular.
Meantime, where conservatives once had a majority of popular Internet outlets, liberals have since caught up and surpassed them. Academia also tends to be more liberal, and academia is all about the spread of ideas. There are also as many liberal political magazines as their are conservative ones. And where conservatives once had more think-tanks than liberals, that gap has disappeared as well. MoveOn.org is arguably more influential than the AEI or the Heritage Foundation now. So it's not like liberal ideas can't get a fair shot in being heard. Liberal views and ideas are heard everywhere, arguably in more venues than conservative ones.
If you don't like Fox, don't watch it. It's one network. It's not like your choices are limited. And it seems like you're mainly pissed that they're allowed to have an audience at all.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually only have a myspace account, but from the very limited experience I had clicking around on FaceBook, I already know it is a much cleaner platform.
Maybe if Murdoch put some damn effort into fixing Tom's millions of bugs he'd get people to give a crap.
Re:Dan Rather (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because even though the copies he had were forged, all the information in them was accurate.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
And during the day, their shows always have two opposing viewpoints
The regular networks have 2:1 biases in favor of conservative commentators, much less on Fox News. And as someone else pointed out, the hosts are invariably spouting the GOP talking points.
left-wing guests
Democrat != left wing.
And neither are doormats
There are three types of Democrats on Fox: doormats who get humiliated, those who get shouted over, and DINO's like Joe Lieberman.
At least no moreso than, say, MSNBC (hi, Keith Olbermann!).
False equivalency. O'Reilly has rants when stores put up signs saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Olbermann gets angry when the government lies to us and tortures people. Just a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit of a difference.
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:2, Insightful)
'course, I'm not at all sure why Friendster(and possibly Orkut, though it was never the biggest thing, I think) lost out. Myspace I've hated for a good long while because it looks like it was designed by a n00b from 1994 who thinks that eighteen different colors of flashing text is a good idea.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Fox news isn't doing anything different from NBC, CBS and ABC."
Exploding trucks and Rather's "fake documents" just somehow don't match up against 8 years of continuoys Fox propaganda leading the way in suckering the U.S. in to Iraq, and doing everything in their power to elect one of the worst Presidents in our history...twice. If you want I'll make a list of all the bone headed things Bush and Cheney have done, with the help of Fox and Rupert Murdoch, which have nearly destroyed the U.S. and may well succeed in actually destroying it.
For example Bush started the drive in 2001 to put everyone in their own home, even people who simply couldn't afford them, which lead directly to the mortgage crisis which is on the verge of destroying the U.S. economy if the not the global economy.
I'm willing to give Rather a pass on the "fake documents" thing. All indications are the documents were accurate fakes. George Bush did in fact massively cheat on his National Guard service. He and his stooges just managed to destroy all the incriminating documents. As Texas governor he was in charge of the Texas National Guard so it was easy for him to erase his checkered National Guard history. It created extreme frustration in some people that George Bush got a free pass for his dereliction of his Guard duty while Kerry was barbecued for his service and he actually served in combat in Vietnam. People were furious because George's checkered paper trail had been erased so some people used forgery in an attempt to restore it based on the facts as nearly as they have been pieced together. As I recall a particular issue was Bush was probably using cocaine during his Guard years when random drug testing [salon.com] was introduced by the Guard and Bush just went AWOL apparently to make sure he didn't get tested. He apparently didn't show up during all of his last year in the Guard in 1972-1973 and got an honorable discharge in 1973 in spite of failing to show up.
I think it would be cool if all the right wing nut jobs who watch Fox did join MySpace to help Rupert out. It would probably make MySpace nearly toxic as a social networking site since the people who watch Fox are anti-cool.