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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Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated. -- R. Drabek
Mad? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read the linked article a few times and I'm not sure where there is anything to indicate he is mad. Nice use of alliteration though. I did find this article about the difference in growth [zdnet.com.au] between the two sites and it has a lot more information about the situation in general, though nothing about Murdoch's reaction. I couldn't find anything more about that - like where and when he said the things they say he said, what the tone was, etc.
Facebook won't last (Score:5, Interesting)
Now facebook is even spammier than myspace, with hundreds of applications I can't stand, and all their invites. I have to "add" an application in order to view it. I don't want to view it. I don't want a "drink" invitation, or a "pirate" invitation. Leave me alone.
This is why I quit Facebook [fredrickville.com]
A shill for the State gets his just deserts (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
MySpace, though, is the anti-thesis of government. It's about freedom. People don't necessarily realize that, but that's the end result from allowing people to freely communicate, gather and entertain.
Murdoch overpaid for something that can probably never make a reasonable profit. It's like trying to commercialize peer groups. It doesn't work. Murdoch screwed up time and time again by not providing for correct advertising focus to the customers of MySpace. The advertising doesn't work. It's a broken system. Facebook is no better, in my opinion, but at least they're providing services that a slightly upper crust clientele wants.
The future of the web is not about large-scale sites dominating over tiny ones. It's the whole long tail situation: the big sites are mere portals to other sites, and the sites that fail to do this properly will be hurt significantly by trying to be the big boy on campus. Those who made money by being shills for the State will also suffer (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc). The long tail is getting longer, and thicker, and stronger, and it will become superior in financial clout than the few large sites that used to be powerful. Even slashdot (probably NOT a shill for the State) is likely finding pain as smaller sites/blogs/forums are grabbing a larger chunk of the pie.
So what should Murdoch do? Break down MySpace. Don't be one big site on one big platform: expand to being tiny widgets and plugins that are part of the long tail of tiny blogs and forums and personal webpages. Let people host their MySpace widget on their platform, and send traffic back to MySpace as MySpace sends traffic to billions of tiny sites. MySpace can brand the widget with their own advertising or marketing clout because it'll be a part of millions or billions of sites.
But Murdoch doesn't understand this. Murdoch doesn't want to. He thought "Ohh, billions of teenagers and young adults, we'll sell iPod thingies to them and make trillions! And then we'll push the Iraq War on them subconsciously."
You failed Rupert. Go away.
cold fusion FTL (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that the site was developed using Cold Fusion should have signaled the first sign of its impending demise.
Re:A shill for the State gets his just deserts (Score:3, Interesting)
it was worth the money (Score:5, Interesting)
the error is in how murdoch quantified what he was purchasing, the perception of what he was actually getting for his money: the error is in thinking you are buying a permanent piece of major real estate on the web. no, what you are buying is a major marketing and branding tool for a few years... which is indeed still worth $500 million
for his $500 million, he gets a few years of ad revenue, some "showing soon" movie marketing hype, some cross-branding possibilities, steering a few kids towards a fox reality show, etc. but after a few years run, the site is worth bupkus
as for facebook's $15 billion, all i can do is laugh. $15 billion?! insane. because facebook too will be worth the gum on my sneaker in a few years. facebook is worth what myspace is worth: $500 million
zuckerman or zuckerberg or whatever the kids name: he should have sold facebook out. hes going to be like that friendster guy is today in a few years: the friendster guy daily kicks himself in the ass for not selling out when he could have. zuckerdude is thinking he has the next google on his hands. no, he has the next xanga. sell out kid, asap
thats how you really make money on social networking sites: you sell out to established media conglomerates, and then go play frisbee. to keep a hold of the site, and thinking you are going to become a permanent internet portal, like google, is hubris, arrogance, egotism. unless you are planning to seque into becoming a search engine, and somehow actually take out google... heh, googd luck. but that's the only sound strategy to take if you plan on keeping the social networking site rather than selling out, upping the ante and going for the diamond ring
The fallacy of unique visitors (Score:2, Interesting)
MySpace is horribly buggy. FaceBook Isn't (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had no end of trouble with MySpace. I'm not able to prevent my music from playing when you load my page, even though that's how I set it in my profile. I've always allowed downloads of my MP3s, but at some point they stopped being downloadable. I had to delete them all and re-upload them to get the downloads back.
I have actually found MySpace pages that had been customized in such a way as to make FireFox crash just by loading the page!
My only complaint about FaceBook is that it doesn't allow for downloading MP3s - but that's a lack of a desired feature, and not an actual bug.
Most young people these days are trying out both. I don't think it takes much time for them all to figure out which one is better.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
And during the day, their shows always have two opposing viewpoints. And neither are doormats, most of the time--Susan Estridge or other Democratic strategists are common left-wing guests, and half the time the Republican guests are complete no-names.
The channel sucks--come on, I don't need 24/7 Disaster Coverage From The Leading Name In News--but not because they're "unbalanced." At least no moreso than, say, MSNBC (hi, Keith Olbermann!).
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh god. HOW?! I've been looking, but I can't find anything to do that.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
We call it "Faux" news because it is. Learn this: Fox went to court and defended its right to knowingly broadcast untruth as news because the law does not specifically say they can't. Again, in case you still don't get it: Fox defended its right to broadcast lies that they knew were lies.
And that, among other reasons*, is why it is "faux".
http://www.2dca.org/opinion/February%2014,%202003/2D01-529.pdf [2dca.org]
http://www.foxbghsuit.com/ [foxbghsuit.com]
* 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
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not true, while I'm not an expert on news, I did spend some time in college studying it.
As any journalist knows having two extremists from both sides does not constitute balance. It just means that you've got extremists from both sides. No reputable news organization would employ the individuals that Fox news does. The appearance of bias, even if it isn't real, is something which damages the credibility of a network.
Fox got in trouble because they weren't giving equal air to the other side of issues while at the same time professing to be the most fair and balanced news network on TV. Anybody who's seen the programming knows that's not the case. If it were the case there'd be a more diverse group objecting to it. Rather than just one side of the political spectrum.
Just look at the Dan Rather incident, he wasn't even responsible for that content, and he got shit canned for it. Rather's job on the show was to read the news, whatever was given to him and do the show, shows like that never have the anchor do much beyond that and a few interviews.
As far as myspace goes, it was obvious at the time that he over payed for the site. IIRC at the time myspace was hugely popular, but was somewhat lacking in profitability. For it to have been a decent deal, it would have had to have been making at least 40m a year with a strong brand. And as it turned out the brand just wasn't that strong. I'm sure it can still earn a decent profit, but it was a poor investment in the first place.
Crazy. (Score:0, Interesting)
FTFA
He might as well have said it was not a real website. That kind of talk is crazy, but Steve Ballmer managed to outdo Mrudoch for cluelessness and call him an idiot at the same time.
Moneymen destroy cool concept, 50% chance of rain, news at 10PM.
geocities of the future (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Facebook won't last (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't get how they're worth putting up with the "junk" when every feature they provide can be gotten elsewhere for free without the cruft. Sure, I understand that everything is integrated on those sites, but it's my opinion that level of tight integration is over-hyped.
I gave MySpace a try, mainly because I wanted to checkout the chatroom so I created an account. It seemed like it was nothing more than a beauty contest with everyone trying to prove they've got the best offline social life by displaying all their drunken party pics.
As for blogging, I had no desire to blog on that site. Part of the reason was due to having very little control over the CSS/HTML and being forced to deal with an inflexible site design. I use Blogger for that and it's always worked very nicely, without the garbage addons. I have blogged quite extensively since 2006 (over 300,000 words) and in all that time I've rarely had a problem with Blogger.
I feel the same toward YouTube as I do toward Blogger. I've posted to YouTube and I have very few complaints about it. Well, that's not quite true. I am annoyed that I can't change a video to offline without having to delete it. And then there's the recent messaging upgrade. It's been quite buggy, but I've overlooked those problems because they don't prevent basic usage of YouTube.
I think the reason Blogger and YouTube do well for me is that they're single purpose and don't gunk up your account with garbage. Although YouTube allows unsolicited invites, they're less invasive because they're stored to the message inbox.
If one really wants a portal, personal or job oriented, I think there are better alternatives, which are clean solutions that don't require signing up to heaping truckloads of spam and harassment. For my professional portal, I host that myself because I require full control. I "feel" better knowing that hundreds of thousands of horny college guys aren't surfing my information, because I know they generally don't use google for that.
I dunno. I just don't get it.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
This discussion just reminded me about the bias study that fair has conducted a few times with regards to NPR. Thought I throw out a quote from fair's website which addresses this topic. Point being, bias exists in all media no matter how unbiased they may claim to be; in the end it often comes down to a subjective perceptual issue. People use their own experience as a measuring stick of moderation and slant one way or the other is given undue weight as relative to that perception. Neo-Cons often route NPR for being a liberal new clearing house with a strong left wing slant, when the numbers seem to indicate the opposite. Likewise lefty liberal viewers tend to have the opposite opinion of Fox's "news" coverage, without necessarily backing their claim with anything quantifiable to back up their claims. Perhaps we should all be critical thinkers and weigh the message along with the messenger and arrive at our own conclusions about where to stand on issues of any given topic, political, lifestyle, sports, etc... Bias will exist whether it be by design or by accident, to expect that any source will provide you with "the facts and just the facts" depends on the naive notion that there exists some impartial basis by which reality can be distilled into fact.
Feel free to light up the amber alert signs as soon as you've figured a way to make the truth manifest itself in a solid universally acceptable form.
Re:Mad? Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
(that's right, mod me funny, you know you wanna)
Worthy of every humor mod point allowable.
Besides, any puke who uses their "Socal Web clicking" site to politically drive a candidate amongst the masses of highschool and college age kids as the next JFK really is a tool.
The highschool click part of Facebook strikes me as very Anti-Social. Don't get me wrong, MySpace is littered with people doing the same approach and hanging with people they often do in their real lives.
Social Networking strikes me more useful for businesses than consumers.