MySpace's Melting Makes Murdoch Mad

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."

Mad? Really?

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.

Re:Mad? Really?

FTA:

Facebook has overtaken rival social network MySpace for the first time - provoking an angry outburst from the man who paid $580m for MySpace only three years ago

They don't seem to detail the contents of his outburst, or at least the angry part. However, these lines indicate that the journalist is reporting Rupert Murdoch as "angry", which is closely synonymous with "mad."

Re:Mad? Really?

Maybe Rupert Murdoch wrote conveyed his anger with Facebook's success in REALLY BIG LETTERS!!!111oneoneone

Re:Mad? Really?

I've read the linked article a few times and I'm not sure where there is anything to indicate he is mad.

Duh. The title: "Murdoch fumes as Facebook overtakes MySpace"

=)

Re:Mad? Really?

No kidding, most of the emotion seems to come from the article writer, using terms like 'fumes', 'angry outburst' and 'exasperated'. Does PC Pro actually know Rupert Murdoch enough to know that he's exasperated? They seem to be creating emotion and their own context.

Interesting bit of irony, that

Having that statement applied TO Rupert Murdoch, rather than BY Rupert Murdoch.

Post...

Maybe he should rant about it on his Facebook page.

Facebook won't last

Facebook is on it's way out too. I stopped using it when the plethora of stupid dirty looking applications starting taking over everybody's pages making facebook look more like myspace.

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]

Re:Facebook won't last

You can actually opt out of the Facebook API entirely and then you won't recieve anymore invites or anything else since the applications can't "see" you.

Re:Facebook won't last

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.

Re:Facebook won't last

Leave me alone.

Not feeling social?

Re:Facebook won't last

Murdoch? Is that you?

If Murdoch have that kind of insight, would he own Myspace right now?

Re:Facebook won't last

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.

Maybe it's because

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.......

aargh

No more pirate/vampire/werewolf invitations, please...

Facebook started off a great site, fast, clean design, it's now incredibly slow and hard todo anything, whereas myspace actually is improving.
Still waiting for a mybook, or facespace to integrate the messaging.

Makes Murdoch Mad?

I thought he was already mad. Hmmm.

Duh

How could a UI disaster that informs a user who has problems logging in that "you must be logged in to do that?" and that lacks any kind of official published API possibly win?

hey murdoch

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

Re:hey murdoch

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.

minus the google ads

its called craigslist

Who would've thought

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.

Idea

So I was sitting in my cube on this fine Monday afternoon, eating my lunch, when I had a brilliant idea.

FlashFaceSpace. It will combine the wonderful-nonannoying-awesomeness that is Flash, the unobtrusiveness of Facebook applications, and the customizability of MySpace to create the ultimate social networking site of DEATH. This will blow MySpace, Facebook and every other social networking site out of the water.

just maybe...

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:A shill for the State gets his just deserts

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.

They can take our lives, but they'll never take our MySpace?

Re:A shill for the State gets his just deserts

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.

You may want to find a new line of reasoning. I think that argument is more likely to turn someone against freedom than it is to win someone over to MySpace.