MySpace Loses Ten Million Users In One Month 336
Goldiloxx writes "Social networking website MySpace lost over ten million users between January and February 2011, according to comScore. In February 2011, the Internet website had less than 63 million users, down from a previous total of approximately 73 million."
QQ (Score:5, Interesting)
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For those who don't know, "QQ" is a pair of crying eyes in ascii. That's why it's so interesting.
Re:QQ (Score:4, Insightful)
That's like saying "AOL has no chance in surviving" now that dialup is a joke. But yet, they remain....
Most things that have gotten that big will die a very slow death.
Re:QQ (Score:5, Funny)
Once all the old people who don't realize AOL is still hitting their credit card have died, so will AOL.
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Cobol isn't just "around", Cobol is all over the place. It's not new or interesting, and IMHO is a decidedly outdated language (I'd slap anyone who proposed developing a NEW system in Cobol), but realistically, it works for what it's intended to in most of the places where it's deployed, otherwise it would have been long replaced.
Regardless of what's currently "in style", it's a tough business case to throw money at a problem that has already been solved. That rings even more true in a troubled economy.
NO
Re:QQ (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really believe that Facebook has 600 million users? Or is it more like 600 million unique login names?
Because I personally know several people with several dozen accounts that they use to game the games that require you to have scads of social acquaintances willing to play the games along with you.
I'd put FB's real usership at 50-150 million. The rest are fake.
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Do you really believe that Facebook has 600 million users? Or is it more like 600 million unique login names?
Because I personally know several people with several dozen accounts that they use to game the games that require you to have scads of social acquaintances willing to play the games along with you.
I'd put FB's real usership at 50-150 million. The rest are fake.
You're assuming that everyone creates duplicate accounts. I don't know a single person who does. I think that there are at least 400 million real accounts. ...And I have as much evidence for my position, as you have for yours.
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Have you counted the games?
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250 million log in at any given day.
The fb app on my phone remains logged in and retrieves the latest news in the background. But that's beside the point.
The point is, someone who has 25 avatars in a game will log in 25 times to perform the tasks that a game player has to do to improve enough to be significant in the game. Usually there is the player's primary character, who is the focus of all the avatars' attention, being a collection point for gifts and the primary initiator of quest activities (to get the loot and other benefits of bein
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Hence the saying, "QQ more".
Mexico City analogy. (Score:2)
Bakersfield has no chance of surviving. New York MSA has 19 million+ residents and LA has 17 million+ residents. The only other city north of the Isthmus larger than those two is interestingly Mexico City, which has 22.8 million.
Granted that there are a lot more people who want to live in the other three. The point is, mom-n-pop stores exist despite the onslaught of the big boxes. Internet sites are probably more egalitarian.
Someone will probably pull the plug on MySpace at some point though, if only b
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Bakersfield has no chance of surviving.
Now there's a relief.
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The only larger network than those two is interestingly Chinese QQ, which has 636 million users.
Well, considering that the population of China is just over 1.3 billion, I think that size of user base is to be expected
Re:QQ (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and nice racism there, calling QQ "Chinese", thus implying it is strange and weird.
I'm pretty sure you're the one who equated Chinese with strange and weird, I don't see that in the OP. Due to the fact that QQ is developed and operated by a Chinese company, there's nothing racist in saying that QQ is Chinese. It is. "Chinese" is not a racist term, it's a demonym.
Re:QQ (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people see "racism" everywhere. They see race first in just about everything. They are the real racists, but try telling them that, and they'll deny it profusely because the idea that people who inject "race" into everything, even when it is clearly not a factor as being "racism", escapes their limited small minds.
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Wikipedia tells me that QQ is owned by a Chinese company and is the most popular IM service in China. Is that incorrect? If so, you may wish to edit the article.
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Oh, and nice racism there, calling QQ "Chinese", thus implying it is strange and weird. (The technical term is "Orientalism" - implying that "the East" is antithetical to "the West".) QQ has been in use for ages. It is very big in South Africa...uh-oh, South Africa has a lot of black people. Yikes, when we start stereotyping, it's a minefield!
Don't read to much into it, not everything is about race. Maybe he meant it's interesting because unlike the other 2 most of us are unlikely to have heard of it despite its size (I certainly hadn't), thought of that ? And why the heck can't he call it chinese when its wikipedia page says [wikipedia.org] : "Tencent was founded in Shenzhen, China, in 11 November 1998, by Ma Huateng." ?
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Or more likely, it's entirely appropriate to note it separately because it serves a larger population, so its subscriber numbers are apples-to-oranges. Though that's not quite yet true as lower penetration of Internet services in China means it has more users than the US, but possibly not more than the US + EU.
Actually I'm more astounded that Windows Live Messenger deserved remark, considering it is but a chat client, hardly a social content repository like facebook or myspace. It had started to do conten
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Oh, and nice racism there, calling QQ "Chinese", thus implying it is strange and weird.
So am I racist when I say Facebook is an American company? Since when is referring to where things were founded racism? If I say "LiveJournal is Russian", and I somehow attacking Russians?
Stop being so quick to the gun. I didn't see anything remotely racist in the OP's post, nor, I doubt, did most other people. I don't know why you really want to be offended by things, but it probably isn't healthy. People who constantly look for offense are more annoying than the genuinely offensive.
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Oh, and nice racism there, calling QQ "Chinese", thus implying it is strange and weird.
Whoah, dude. He likely just called it "Chinese" because it appears to be a Chinese company. From the imqq home page summary: "Connecting the information in China that you need, you have now the tools to discover, meet and experience with others who share your vision of China" Funny how nobody referred to or appeared to intend racism or stereotyping until you replied...
QQ has been in use for ages. It is very big in South Africa...uh-oh, South Africa has a lot of black people. Yikes, when we start stereotyping, it's a minefield!
Please clarify how naming a product "Chinese" is stereotyping?
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I think that the KKK is racist.
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Racism is not a position or disposition. That is simple hatred, bigotry and prejudice - which have a number of psychological and sociological bases.
Racism is an "ism" - like Fascism or Capitalism or Communism. Racism is ideological and institutionalised - formally or culturally. It refers to systematic effect on a class of individuals, and individual experience of that effect.
People may be part of a Racist society or institution - regardless of their own personal bigotry or inclusiveness.
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Damn! I didn't mean it! They would not become racist, no matter how often they accused others of racism.
#!@% Godellian knots...
rgb
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Maybe it's actually 63.6 million rage quitters and their other nine accounts they are ashamed to log back into.
Mmm, WHAT YOU SAY !! (Score:2)
You have no change to survive, make your time
I was about to make the same joke, but it was "chance" [youtube.com]. (Mmm, WHAT YOU SAY !! [youtube.com])
News? (Score:2)
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My initial reaction was, "MySpace had 10 million users?"
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Mine was more along the lines that since I hadn't heard them mentioned in any news stories for so long, they likely didn't exist anymore. :-P
Obviously, not being a user I have no idea ... I know Facebook still exists, because they're in the news all of the time.
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Why will Facebook decline?
Ebay is still the top auction site (in general) after a decade.
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Ebay and Facebook are different beasts, but Facebook can remain the top social networking site while still being in decline. Maybe it's because I think Facebook's appeal is in part due to its relative newness.
"Hey, I can post my thoughts in one place and all these people will see them!"
"Hey, I haven't talked to her in years and now I can find out what's going on in her daily life without picking up the phone."
After awhile you realize that getting the 1 page update in the Xmas card each year is more than eno
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eBay seems like a natural monopoly to me. When you auction something, you have to pick one site. You can't auction the same item at multiple auction sites. Since everybody has to pick one, they pick what they think is the best one. For an auction "best" is closely tied to "popular" since exposure is important. Once a clear winner emerged, it was all she wrote.
Frankly, I'm surprised that eBay/paypal gets away with this monopoly. It definitely keeps me away. I'd like to see them forced to use competing
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My point is that staying dominant in a market is easier than becoming dominant. All you basically have if anything vaguely becomes a threat is to copy what makes the up and comers popular if nothing else.
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That's basically what Facebook did to MySpace. It improved on social networking beyond what MySpace offered because it was more personalized and less childish (using real names and not allowing horrible page layouts, for starters. Facebook also didn't stop loading pages within every five internal links like MySpace often did). Facebook also monetizes more intelligently and less intrusively, aiming ads at users who may be interested in seeing them using a small box on the side panel rather than Flash popups
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Your argument in defense of eBay works for Facebook as well though. Another auction site can't gain traction because eBay has a user base and is well known? Well same with Facebook. Users won't start suddenly using iAuctionSite just like they won't start suddenly using Face-whatever. For another company to break into the market, they will have to convince users to switch and users won't switch unless their personal threshold of other users who have already switched is met. What is an auction site with no au
Re:News? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm not surprised they are losing this many users. Rather than stagnating and becoming irrelevant like Geocities and Livejournal, MySpace is actively alienating it's userbase.
They saw that people were moving to other platforms, and decided to engage in a poorly thought out redesign that took the features people actually used, and removed, broke, or hid them.
I haven't deleted my MySpace accounts, but as a musician until recently did have a worthwhile reason for logging in periodically to keep in touch with v
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Agreed. MySpace was in a great position to become THE indy music network, but they failed to realise that opportunity and went through with a massive redesign that alienated all those users.
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I'd disagree. There isn't a social networking site that is cool enough to compete with FB as of now.
When FB came to common view, for a couple years, it and MySpace coexisted, where the "cool" kids were on MySpace and the others ended up on FB. Then by the force of peer pressure, pretty much people moved to FB in toto.
MySpace still may exist -- it is a decent place for bands and having music ready to listen to. However, as a social network, its days are past. Maybe MySpace's best bet is to retool as a ba
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Re:News? (Score:4, Informative)
1. My list of friends was significantly reduced from what it had been in the past, making me think that they cancelled their accounts.
2. Myspace is completely different looking than it was however long ago I last logged in. You wouldn't even recognize it now. Apparently when they redid the look, they wiped out any customized backgrounds that were set.
3. For some reason, myspace decided that I am following Justin Bieber, Russell Crowe, Tom Petty, and a whole slew of other celebrities, most of which I have never heard of. The entire content of my 'home' screen is a bunch of updates from bands and actors that I have no interest in.
4. None of my remaining friends have posted a comment in over a year.
5. I apparently 'earned' a 'badge' for joining myspace 'before it was cool'. I'm pretty sure I was a late adopter.
6. You can cancel your account, but it is a separate step process that involves you responding to a confirmation email. Perhaps that is reasonable. They grovel for you to stay at several points in the process.
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Apparently when they redid the look, they wiped out any customized backgrounds that were set.
And that's a bad thing???!!!!
As far as I'm concerned, MySpaces eye-gougingly fugly "customized backgrounds" should have been nuked from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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When twitter first rolled out I suspected, because it was being so relentlessly hyped, that it was some sort of venture capital ploy. I haven't followed, do they have a financial plan yet?
Keep trying... (Score:2)
MySpace's Chief Executive Officer Michael Jones has claimed that the website is "no longer a social network anymore" and that it is currently a "social entertainment destination".
Allow me to translate: "Our business model is screwed, because someone else did it much better, so we're desperately trying to rebrand ourself as something else"
It's in people's nature to never give up, keep trying to the bitter end, but this is a sinking ship that cannot be saved.
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Their CEO has a background in international business and marketing [wikipedia.org]. Talk about the kiss of death for a technology company.
Has there ever been a successful tech company run by a marketing person? This is an honest question.
Re:Keep trying... (Score:4, Informative)
Has there ever been a successful tech company run by a marketing person? This is an honest question.
DAK is as close as I can think of. I enjoyed reading his catalog. Of course they went bankrupt but for many years they were somewhat successful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAK_Industries [wikipedia.org]
The wikipedia article carefully avoids discussing the demise of DAK, but as I recall the problem was he was quite talented at profitably selling "last years stereo" but he bought heavily, and tried to sell "last years computer" and went bankrupt.
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Jobs isn't exactly a marketing person, more a sort of technological missionary. And when Sculley was running it, Apple tanked. Sculley *was* a marketing person (imported from Pepsi).
Even Sculley has admitted that he was the wrong choice as director. He's a marketer, and a good one. But that wasn't the right specialty.
I don't think it's that bad... (Score:5, Funny)
10,000,001 (Score:5, Funny)
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I can't remember my login, let alone my password to delete mine...
wrong place for my bandsite (Score:3, Funny)
so printing my myspace address on the back of a CD like I did 3 years ago was a bad idea?
crap
www.myspace.com/russbro - say hello to www.facebook.com/russbrownmusic
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The irony is myspace seems to be the place all musical artists go to these days, with facebook being an afterthought. I do concert and show promotion as a side business and I see tons of myspace band sites still. Facebook doesn't really cater to them like myspace did. It's ashame.
Re:wrong place for my bandsite (Score:4, Insightful)
this is facebook's fate too (Score:5, Insightful)
anyone remember friendster?
it's my belief that social networks will rise and fall, endlessly in succession. simply because ubiquity eventually becomes a liability amongst a crowd who views exclusion and superiority to be more important. eventually, one of these smaller exclusive networks becomes the object of envy for others to be "in" that exclusive group, and the long march to ubiquity begins, until you start all over again
its an empty vapid game. its also pretty much boilerplate sociological fact. consider nightclubs in cities: the small chic "in" club that everyone wants to get into, overexposure, then decline because the "cool" kids want their own exclusive club. rinse, repeat
and no, facebook will not become ubiquitous plumbing. because they need to make money to survive. to make that money, they need to sell the personal details of their members. which is a force that will drive people from facebook as they wise up to how creepy that really is: by feeding their personal details to the machine, they are telling their abuser how to abuse them
so be on the lookout for the next friendster/ myspace/ facebook. could be diaspora. or maybe being programmed right now in some dorm room. $$$ to the chaps who start/ find the right network at the right time, and ride that rocket all the way up
The next social network (Score:3)
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hey! that's my plan!
maybe i can sue you for billions for disclosure of intellectual property secrets on a public comment board. hmmm. the question is, what technology did you use to read my mind?
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actually, everybody commenting on this board is the many different personalities of one insane individual. only you are a different person, who has unwittingly descended into the petty internal arguments of a deranged mind
hmmm... that's actually a good plot for a matrixy inceptiony type movie
oh shit! intellectual property disclosed in public again! curses!
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exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
you're talking about a social network protocol, like http, smtp, nntp, etc
the point is, we'd have many different internets today if it was started as different walled gardens you had to pay for. well, actually, that is the way it was: bbses, compuserve, etc. all of which died in favor of the free and the open
so end game for friendster/ myspace/ facebook is a free and open social network protocol. sntp sounds too confusingly like smtp so lets call it...
vytp
vapid yammering transfer protocol
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The next and 'final' social network will be an open source peer-to-peer network with commercial caching and hosting; if my plan works.
The problem with that theory is that people who care about open source and peer-to-peer are basically just the Slashdot crowd, and they won't have any friends to link to!
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Great, you just invented ... the Internet! Al Gore is gonna be PISSED
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anyone remember friendster?
Oh, that service... The one where I had maybe one or two friends sent me invites from a few years ago, I foolishly signed up, and to this day I still keep getting periodic automated E-Mails from?
Still haven't seen a reason to login since.
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The problem with your analogy is that Facebook isn't a chic 'in' club for young hipsters. It's Disneyworld and *everyone* is there - Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, Dad, all the aunts and uncles, all the cousins... And they don't give a damn which nightclub
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you are making the ubiquitous plumbing end game argument. remember compuserve? at one time, we had walled gardens you had to pay for like compuserve. all swept aside by a free and open internet. likewise, facebook can have all the inertia in the world, but it can't compete with free and open. and as time goes on, could take five years, could take ten years, you reach a tipping point, and it becomes a mass exodus. so facebook is not end game. end game is something like facebook, but free and open and not beh
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i see you understand the resistance to myspace that made exclusivity attractive, but you say its better to have everyone on it. what i'd like you to consider is that you are only 120 degrees of an arc along a story that has an endless 360 degree circle. the story keeps going around and around: 1. desire for exclusivity, 2. desire for ubiquity, rinse, repeat
Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
it's my belief that social networks will rise and fall, endlessly in succession. simply because ubiquity eventually becomes a liability amongst a crowd who views exclusion and superiority to be more important
That sounds like a fair description of Slashdot, but does it really apply to Facebook?
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But that's exactly the key innovation of facebook - exclusion. All its users are not in one big group that can all see each other; you have to be invited, i.e. "friended." Thus the lame people aren't too bothersome to the cool people, even if they do access the same domain name. Friend networks can rise and fall all within facebook. At least that's the idea. We'll see.
63 million users (Score:2)
And 62.9 Million of them are pornobots and promotional pages for crappy bands.
It's called my[___] now (Score:4, Funny)
As if it could get any worse, now their name has underscores in it.
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MySpace lost over ten million users ? (Score:2)
So, where are they? Abducted by aliens? Can Mulder and Scully look into this? Spontaneous human combustion? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion [wikipedia.org] ? Maybe they are on a small island in the Pacific, playing Pinochle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinochle [wikipedia.org] ) with Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison?
Question: "How do you lose ten million users? " Answer: "One customer at a time."
1 million users lost? (Score:3)
Does that include users who have abandoned the service?
I have a myspace account. I don't think I've updated it in 5 years.
Owned by NewsCorp (Score:3, Interesting)
Awesome news. I wish it had more to do with people actively looking at boycotting News Corp.
I've been working on a firefox extension to help people boycott News Corp, NBC and others: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webcott/ [mozilla.org]
Also looking at alternatives to myspace here: http://bryanquigley.com/webcott/leave-myspace-for-wordpress-com [bryanquigley.com]
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The add-on can also be used to just tell you which sites are owned by key corporate entities (News Corp, GE, etc).
Ideas are indeed weapons.
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While we're on the topic, this one blocks Newscorp articles (Fox News and WSJ) from displaying in Google news:
http://userstyles.org/styles/13510 [userstyles.org]
Woot! (Score:2)
Now that's what I call a good start! just 63 million to go!
Myspace and Rustock Botnet (Score:3)
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Considering Rustock was taken down in March and this is data between January and February I'd say it's probably not related.
Myspace Beta killed the musical star (Score:2)
Considering their new beta plan screwed up a lot of sites for bands, I think the migration numbers are not only right, but also will increase as more bands move to other social media platforms. The only reason I even think to go to Myspace is because some band has made it their landing page. If Myspace continues to be hostile to the only group that keeps it alive, they will have no choice but to go away.
Loss? (Score:2)
You may have chosen to close your account, but they still have your data.
Google? (Score:2)
Why it failed (Score:2)
MySpace was the GeoCities of social media sites. Every page had horrific backgrounds and thousands of animated GIFs and there was crap blinking everywhere.
I'm surprised that a good percentage of MySpace users didn't die from epileptic seizures induced by all that flashing.
some pe(rson)ople still uses it.... (Score:2)
Just the other day I got an event invite on facebook for a "delete your account party"
The description said "hey people im deleting my facebook. you should too! you can reach me at...." he rambled off a bunch of email, IM, forum contacts and a voip. I made it a point that he shouldnt try to influence people to give up facebook just because does. I then pointed out that its counterproductive to replace x with y and z if they function exactly the same and everyone uses x anyway.
He didnt give a phone# or
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Huh. I only started using it little more than a year ago. If they shut it off I wouldn't really care, but I have a lot of friends who would.
I did have the misfortune of looking at a few myspace pages, though (never had an account), and they made me want to rip my eyes out. My brother was actually boasting about having his own website and, when I asked what the address was, gave me a link to his myspace page. So... I guess what I'm saying is I don't see how facebook has become worse...
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
You were actually able to view a MySpace page for long enough to want to rip your eyes out? I'm impressed. Back when MySpace was popular, most of those pages would crash my web browser long before I actually got to look at them.
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But my life coach said if I think hard enough it'll come true!
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That's because Facebook doesn't have a "Dislike" button.
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>Thank goodness he bet on the wrong social network.
MySpace is what you get when Rupert Murdoch tries to be hip. He should stick to scaring old people and giving them sound bite answers to complex problems, it's what he does best.
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scaring old people and giving them sound bite answers to complex problems
Isn't that the business model of myspace / facebook / twitter?
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This is true, but at the time he bought MySpace, it was worth a lot more than Facebook was. Which is why he bought it. He thought he was going to rule with MySpace and Facebook would remain smaller forever.
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You know. That thing. With the things.