Facespace?

A post on The Oatmeal remembered me of what was upon a time… How Tom Anderson and DeWolfe sold and how Facebook beat myspace, and of course, the ultimate drop, the connection to myspace through facebook. Brrr…

[source: “The Oatmeal”, but you have to click the pic to see it’s real value]

I used to have one of my favorite Social Media accounts on myspace…
Myspace was a real experience. It forced me to learn HTML, it was funny and made me a lot of valuable friends I still treasure. In Turkey, it wasn’t very popular, especially because of HTML and the language. More than that, they forbid it one time, as they did with youtube, on various reasons (copyright infringements, Atatürk, blah, blah…) I was convinced it happened because of Microsoft via Facebook. Facebook was an emerging dating site with no needs of any “computer knowledge”, just as simple as fill some info in some cases and the rest was just “click click click”. A lazy people network. Right for everyone, in Turkey started in English, and in a very short time they made it in Turkish. Myspace was already translated, but during the few months of the ban, Facebook became so popular that it made impossible any challenge. Too simple. As simple as typing your name and a “click” after that. Your Yahoo, or Windowslive or hotmail addresses were hooked into Facebook, and your first friends were your contacts who clicked on the automatic link.

[source]

In 2007, myspace used to be more than a social networking site, a real cultural phenomenon, with about two hundred thousands new users registered daily, and has even surpassed Google in terms of traffic. Boasting over 200 million users, myspace loomed over other social networking sites such as Friendster, Xanga, Bebo. Not over Facebook. Myspace used to be a social network, a media hosting site that is part chat room, part movie theater, part shopping mall, part bar, and part concert that is open 24 hours, a day 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In short time after Facebook become the first Social Media Network, myspace became something as bland as Facebook, even more lame. The Oatmeal joke is still doing them favors. Maybe little of you know that Facespace real exists. The network maybe have more that fifty users.

[Facespace.com]

This is no joke, it is real. But let’s go back to myspace . It was founded in 2003 by Matt DeWolf and Tom Anderson, after DeWolf bought the domain myspace.com in 2002 with the intention to make a web-hosting company, but he only used it to sell a scooter made in China for $99 a piece. DeWolf was head of sales and marketing at Xdrive, a company that provided free online storage space for photos, music, and files. He met the creative Anderson, in 2000, offering him a job at Xdrive. In 2001, the company went bankrupt. DeWolf and Anderson formed their own company called ResponseBase, an e-mail list “broker” that sold lists of e-mail subscribers to other companies for marketing purposes. As you know, this is what Facebook used to do, and maybe still does, but I’m not talking about that, now. After selling this with a good profit to something called eUniverse, renamed Intermix Media, DeWolf and Anderson started looking for a new line of work. Both saw the potential of social networking, especially the combination of “traditional” social networking with the sort of personal expression enabled by other sites, such as blogs or personal web pages. Armed with a business plan written by DeWolf in 2002 for another Social Media site of no importance now, they both went to Intermix with the proposition. Their executives were enchanted and myspace was born. From that initial launch in 2003, in 2004 myspace registered a networking explosion. The appeal of myspace was that it is an “open” site, meaning the it lets users control the page and post nearly whatever they want to post. Each profile was a blank canvas for its owner and, in that sense, the term “myspace” gives a user “his space” to do whatever he or she wants with it.

[source]

The transaction between eUniverse or Intermix with Newscorp (Rupert Murdoch’s Media Corporation) is of no importance now, nor how many millions of dollars were pocketed at the time, and by who. It was a “bargain”, just $580 million. The billions were not yet invented. Everybody was happy, less Murdoch and myspace members. But members don’t count. Murdoch invested money.

[source]

In June 2009, myspace employed approximately one thousand six hundreds workers. By June 2011, they had reduced its staff to around two hundreds. In June 2011, Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake jointly purchased the company for approximately $35 million.

Myspace has attempted to redefine itself as a social entertainment website, with more of a focus on music, movies, celebrities, and TV, instead of a social networking website. Myspace also developed a linkup with Facebook that would allow musicians and bands to manage their Facebook profiles. CEO Mike Jones was quoted as saying that Myspace now is a “complementary offer” to Facebook Inc., which is “not a rival anymore.” – from myspace’s Wikipedia page

Outrageously keeping up with the times. One not can block the current, don’t he? They say on Wikipedia, myspace still has 25 million members. They don’t have me.

 

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