MySpace has just become redundant to me. :/

But should I hang on to it? And if so - for how long?

Let’s not forget about Friendster.com… Yep!

Friendster has is strong in Asia and among Asian communities. If that’s your market.. then Friendster.com maybe your social network.

The point is….

“We” get too caught up with ourselves and not focused on the market and how things are truly changing. We focus too much on the personalities of social media, not enough on the dynamics of social media and how that is playing out with the rest of the world not just our own.

Well put. This is a horrible analogy but, it makes me think of MySpace as kinda the WalMart of the social networking space in terms of market share. Certainly, if I have a product, I want to get it out in front of the most amount of consumers possible (within the targeted demographic, of course)

Right, and let us not be too fixated on playing with ourselves on Twitter just for the sake of “hearing” & being “heard”. Not saying not to use it but ask, am I being effective with my time (tangent, sorry!)

Jonathan - You’re welcome … though the thought of me spanking anyone is kinda strange.

Campbell - Agreed.

Jim - Thanks for sharing the insight. Nothing against Facebook as a strategy … it can certainly work on reaching different folks, but MySpace has its merits.

Mark - I don’t care for the user experience on MySpace much, either. But again, I’m supposed to help clients reach people. MySpace is a relevant place for that. As for demographics, I have nothing official from MySpace, but Quantcast.com gives you a nice profile estimate that is generally reliable, though not exact.

Stephen - Agreed. I’m not going to be a MySpace junkie all of a sudden, but it’s responsible to play where the people are if you’re trying to reach them.

Mack - And as an individual user, that makes a lot of sense. As a marketer helping people plug into communities and reach consumer, though, don’t you want to still know what’s going on there? Just a thought.

Kevin - I expected you’d be one to pop in with some pro comments. Your brand of humor works in the MySpace blogs, too, I’d suspect. And good for you for recognizing the value of that audience.

Britt - Certainly MySpace is only the responsible strategy if you know your target audience is there. I wouldn’t mean to imply everyone should play there all the time. You’re right - it has to fit your objectives. And trending numbers are out there, I’m sure. Quantcast is my stop for quick, easy, almost but not exact data. I can only use ComScore for official client business. (Sigh.)

I also wonder if the aging demographic is in part due to people who have stayed with it after its initial boom while fewer younger people have signed up? I seem to recall some stats about Facebook showing larger gains with young people, but I’m not positive. Will have to look it up.

MySpace is also much easier to target market on. You can leverage numbers on there, it is much harder to do that on facebook. But because tech-geeks love facebook all the social media people bite and follow the drum.

For every client and company I have worked with I have converted sales from MySpace, I have built brand awareness on there, and continued to do well on there on a personal level. Let everyone else doubt and hate because they don’t like the layouts or how crappy people design their pages. (What is funny to me is that people complain about the how horrible the design of people’s pages are but to me it shows a commitment to the site and an investment of time. Making those people ones I want to go after as a marketer.)

Anyways… Let the “experts” talk it down. I will continue to make money off of using the site.

BTW Facebook is getting a bit worse about this as well, but MySpace was a much bigger offender, and that’s why they lost my account.

Nice post. One of my main reasons for leaving Myspace was using it became cumbersome. It crashed constantly and was becoming very frustrating to keep up with what was spam versus what was real from my notifications. Facebook gave me a more stable operating service with almost none of the spam even if it was at the cost of many of my friends. I do check into Myspace eventually now but its mostly spam.

I became worried earlier this year when Facebook spam started to mount but they made it easy for me to shut off the annoying notifications from some connections. If Myspace could come up with these kind of innovative solutions to some of the scaling issues they have I would come back. Heck, my older brother back in Savannah is on Myspace and I would love to look in and see what is going on with him more frequently. I just need it to be less painful.

However, I’m willing to admit that I haven’t given MySpace a fair shake and I don’t know a lot about it. Therefore, point to you, Jason, for pointing out the important fact that it still has a sizeable userbase.

HOWEVER… what are the demographics on MySpace? I perceive it to be a gathering place for the under 25 crowd, which might appeal to me more as a content creator than for personal networking.

They’ve made the transition to business, while Facebook still languishes under the transition from playing to working.

Just a few things they are doing - Movies, Music, Television, Politics, Video Games and advertising. Since they are an open network, you can derive SEO and traffic to the site with direct links. And most important, MySpace can be an integrated part of a larger marketing campaign, while Facebook remains a single-use system where you don’t own your own data.

Both sites have advantages, but it is foolish to write off 66 million visitors who are more likely to respond to advertising than Mac-heavy, internet savvy Facebook users.