What's Myspace?

    Obviously I'm kidding.


    Who can forget Myspace? Launched in 2003, it quickly became the most popular social networking site in the world. At its peak in 2006, Myspace had over 100 million active users. In 2007, the massive site was worth $12 billion.


    And as quickly as it skyrocketed to the top, it seemingly disappeared.


    Today, Myspace's parent company News Corp. (Rupert Murdoch) sold the website to "advertising targeting firm Specific Media" (whatever the hell that means) for a bargain $35 million. Ouch. Even worse? News Corp. bought Myspace in 2005 for $580 million. Double ouch.


    I bet they wish Tom had more friends right about now.


    Enough about the financial side of that though. Everyone knows Facebook is king right now anyway (atleast in the U.S.).


    What really surprised me about this is how quickly Myspace slid into obscurity. It felt like it happened overnight. As soon as people jumped on the Facebook bandwagon, Myspace felt absolutely dead. Nobody was even trying to tag-team the social networking world, and do both. Everything just stopped.


    And for anyone who was there when it happened, you know what I mean. It didn't actually stop. Just the stuff everybody wanted to see stopped. The people left. The bands, fake accounts, spammers, and ridiculous internet personalities and socialites trying to add everyone and they're mother didn't stop.


    That's what ruined Myspace. Twitter has this problem too, but atleast they dont blow up your bulletin box.


    Now it seems as if Facebook has nowhere to go but down. It's currently ranked 2nd in the world amongst the largest social networking sites, and my guess is that's only because there is probably a China-specific social network site that all 300 trillion of them are on at all times. Are we going to see the demise of Facebook?


    I personally don't think so.


    I think much like what happened to Myspace, a bigger better deal is going to catch on, and a paradigm shift in the largest body of daily internet traffic will switch from Facebook, to whatever that new site may be.


    Or will it?


    What about Twitter? Many thought it was the next big thing. Maybe it still is. Right now, it seems to be co-existing nicely, with many (including myself) tag-teaming the two sites. Maybe this is the future of social networking? Is there enough room for the both of them in this town?


     That's not even the worst part of this. Myspace has cut its workforce from 500 employees to just 50 as of June 2011. I hope Facebook has room for them all to go work at their 150,000 square foot Palo Alto, California headquarters. Surely there's a few empty desks.


    This could go on and on, involving Tumblr, Tagged, Youtube etc. but those all have a few different elements uncommon from these others. Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter have, and will continue to draw our attention away everyday for years. I'm curious to see what happens next.


 -Anderson Rowe