MySpace #1 US Destination Last Week 381
An anonymous reader writes "Hitwise is reporting that MySpace has reached the top, surpassing Yahoo! Mail as the most visited site on the internet for US users. Seeing a 4300% increase in visits in just two short years, this internet sensation has come quite a long ways. From the article: 'To put MySpace's growth in perspective, if we look back to July 2004 myspace.com represented only .1% of all Internet visits. This time last year myspace.com represented 1.9% of all Internet visits. With the week ending July 8, 2006 market share figure of 4.5% of all the US Internet visits.'"
blwh (Score:5, Insightful)
Worthless. (Score:2, Insightful)
Worrisome, but not unexpected (Score:5, Insightful)
Today, we have online dating, message boards for everything, and web based chat everywhere. If a site isn't dynamic, it's quickly dropped by the online populace. The fact is, this is not unexpected. Myspace.com spent some time developing a site where people could blog and network. It worked for them.
The worrisome part of this is that people don't seem to understand how potentially dangerous this is. Consider the sheer volume of details some people (read: children) put on their myspace accounts. Parents SHOULD police this, but, all too often, they don't. The fact is that this service presents all too much possibility for children to get hurt. Consider also the single women all over who post their info online. Some of them realize that they shouldn't post that they live alone in an apartment in south-central LA, but others would very quickly post this sort of thing. Unfortunately, this again puts people at risk.
I don't think that the site should be stopped from operating, as I tend to be somewhat of the opinion that if you put your details out there for the world to see, it's your fault if something bad happens. OTOH, people need to think a bit more.
Obvious! (Score:4, Insightful)
Combining lots of barely post pubescent teens with raging hormones and disposable income contributes to this large growth. The website scaled and spread by word of mouth. This site is the best representation of a "free internet" as far as I can tell. Everyone who wants to be on it, can be on it. This includes the spectrum of bands looking for fans with a pro website, to teens looking for a connection, including the text choice of size 55 pink wingdings on a blinking blue background or whatever.
The site has support from everyone, the users, the advertisers, the creators, the owners. Everyone is getting something they want from it. This is how a business grows so rapidly.
To quote(paraphrase) someone, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
Narcissism (Score:5, Insightful)
People are presented with a tool for publishing absolutely anything, about any topic they choose. Instead of presenting thoughtful, creative or otherwise valuable content, the vast majority elect to pointlessly ramble about themselves in minute detail or engage in endless back and forth with other users about nothing in particular. Which is fine, but it shouldn't have the legitimacy of other web content.
In many ways, the whole blog concept has perhaps lowered the barrier to entry for on-line publishing a little *too* far. When anyone can publish anything you want with virtually no effort, then it no longer requires that you be inspired or motivated before your inane ramblings are out there in cyberspace. The media has adopted the trend too, with 'blog' in the context of a news site all too often meaning 'poorly researched and largely content-free "reporting" on sensationalist subject matter.'
Perhaps it's time to move past the blog hype and to consider some method for differentiating personal diaries (i.e., what used to be a personal homepage), social chit chat (i.e., what used to be a bulletin board, IRC, or IM activity), and publications with actual content. Right now the net is awash with an ever-expanding tide of rubbish and there is very little to assist in finding the few really interesting and high quality publications amongst the garbage.
Ultimately it's depressing that, given the ability to communicate our ideas to anyone on earth, most of us can't come up with anything better than pictures of ourselves drinking too much and mass-produced but ineffectual rebelliousness.
Myspc Sux! LOL! (Score:3, Insightful)
The general anti myspace rhetoric is usually, "we can already have our own web pages", which labels myspace as a somewhat redundant service with advertisements.
What I rarely see about myspace, is what a brilliant idea it is. Not everyone knows how to create a website, but most people have the capacity, and interest to learn how to use myspace. Instead of looking down on myspacers perhaps those of us who know how to use the internet should learn how to cater to those who are not technically savvy. Isn't that the idea of selling technology? Making things that normally wouldn't be accessible to everyone accessible?
Of course, whenever one of my friends asks me if I have created a myspace page yet, I always reply by calling them a worthless tool. Weird eh?
The triumph of "old media" (Score:4, Insightful)
Alexa says that the top five sites today are, in order, Yahoo, MSN, Google, Myspace, and eBay. Of those, only Myspace is owned by an "old media" company, and only Myspace is growing significantly. This may be the first time that a top Internet site was owned by an "old media" company. (Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation [www.newscorp]). It makes sense; Myspace is to the Internet as tabloid journalism is to the newspaper industry. News Corp now has a leading position in both.
Re:Find this hard to believe. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Worthless. (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news, MySpace was designed.
Clue to all geeks everywhere:
Nobody cares that MySpace runs on code that is inelegant, nor that it results in sloppy-looking personal pages
It's a big ol' mess, but it's a big ol' mess that a lot of young folks find useful. End of story.
The NEW Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw a movie preview yesterday on tv where it didn't list a website, but a myspace address. It may be a good thing that your content provider will become a social networking site, so you could look at your content in virtually the same way on every computer which is connected.
But doing the same thing the same way as everyone else isn't what being a nerd is all about, right?
Re:Narcissism (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of people are merely average Joes. Everyone cannot be Einstein, nor can everyone be Crichton. That's just the way it is and the way it always will be. Most people don't post anything deeper because most people simply aren't deeper, and it's unlikely that they ever will be, in particular when they're born, raised, and socialized in a consumer orgy of a society that is itself incredibly inane.
Not only have most people in our culture never had a deep thought, but most of them have never even been exposed to a deep thought. Deep thoughts aren't good for markets, they tend to reduce superficiality and overconsumption, which are the two things the growth and maintenance of our society most depends on.
Re:I am sick and tired of these covert ads for.... (Score:1, Insightful)
On Slashdot? Or anywhere?
C'mon. Get real. Perhaps
Having a unique name really sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
So anyway, you need only type my name into Google and have a complete record of every inane thing I ever said back when I was 15 years old. If there is anyone else in the world with the same name, they haven't ever used it on the net. Ok, so it's not particularly damaging information, but it does allow ANYONE to find out that I like Nirvana and Douglas Adams and RPGs and arguing with people. It's rather embarassing, really, to have your semi-profound adolescent musings completely exposed, availible for anyone to read at any time so long as they know your first and last name, but there's really nothing I can do about it. The original archives have been cached by Google and archive.org. Like it or not, I'm immortalized, and I really pity the fools on Myspace who have unique names, or even the ones with common names but specific addresses (or other identifying personal info) posted. In all liklihood every single trivial fact, every single inane/insane rant has been archived *somewhere* and it'll eventually turn up in a Google search. It's irreversable--it's a gigantic bell that simply can't be un-rung.
I shudder to think what would've happened if I made a truly questionable post under my real name. If some teen posts a rant on Myspace that could be construed as racist or radically anarchist or in any other way offensive or unpopular, that rant will be there perhaps for the rest of his life. It will be there every time he goes to apply for a job, and if he was foolish enough to provide such information as a home address he won't be able to claim it's not him. I don't know what there's any real solution for this except education. A lot of people out there don't see the point in anonymity, or even worse they view it as a weakness, a sign of guilt or triviality. Unfortunately, likely they won't start paying attention until criminals and potential employers/friends/lovers alike start turning to Google every time they get curious about their mark/employee/friend/etc.
Wonderful post! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Narcissism (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to sound to misanthropic, but if MySpace is inane, it's because people are inane. MySpace is merely a microcosm. Go out and listen to people talking. At work, at a bar, whatever. You're going to hear pointless rambling.
On a completely different tack... you're looking at what people publish, and maybe not looking at what people are reading on MySpace -- what they're getting out of it. That is a lot harder to figure out. What I found, when I signed up, was that it was a way to keep up with my local music scene. In that regard, it has been valuable .. or at least (heh) no more inane than the local music scene itself (which maybe isn't saying much, I can't make up my mind about that). I don't know why this one sector of the economy(?) or culture(?) is so well represented on that one website, but it just happens that most bands are on MySpace. And most of my time spent there, is looking to see when'n'where I'm going to be rocking-out next. Sometimes I wonder how much of MySpace traffic is accounted for, in people just looking at event-invites, checking bands' schedules, etc. The interface certainly isn't very efficient.
Re:Find this hard to believe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has an efficient interface, so people aren't paging through lots of stuff trying to find what they're looking for. They aren't having to load a bunch of images that are unrelated to anything they're interested in, either.
With MySpace, if I want to find someone's schedule, I have to look at page after page of unsorted friends. I guess MySpace's programmers have decided that computers just aren't any good at sorting things. (And try using MySpace without loading images sometime, or with Javascript disabled.)
If the study was based on volume-of-traffic or number-of-http-requests, it doesn't surprise me MySpace came out on top. It takes an aweful lot of web pages transferred, to get anything done on there. Maybe it's so they can sell more ad impressions or something dumb like that (too bad I filter out the ads).
use Hitwise to track your website, apparently (Score:4, Insightful)
Want a good example of how that "top site" statistic is a bunch of bullshit? I don't know a single person that uses Myspace. I know LOTS of people that have yahoo/gmail/etc webmail accounts.
Oh, and it doesn't hurt to have every other page return a server error or a blank page. I'm told Myspace's servers are about as reliable a crack addict.
"Seeing a 4300% increase in visits in just two..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Like that would mean anything. Anyway, a few more dozen
MySpace has only just begun. (Score:5, Insightful)
Recently, slashdot ran this article [cnn.com] about Ask.com's growing market share. CEO Jim Lanzone has complained that his service is superior to competitors, but has not yet approached the market share of the Google-ocracy. The reason? Like Xerox before it, Google has become a part of our common venacular in 2006 (to google, I googled it, etc). Some expect Google will remain on top for this reason alone, others claim that superior technology is how Google became #1 in the first place, and so, Ask.com has a chance.
So what does this have to do with MySpace? MySpace currently finds itself in a similar position; unlike rivals such as Facebook or Friendster (remember them?) their market share is simply in a league all its own. I also see another important difference which secures this position for MySpace- when trying another search engine, my total expended time equals about 10 seconds; type, click, go. I don't need to register for anything, and my experience is dependant on nothing more than the latest search algorithms. With a social network, I must invest a significant amount of time in order to setup my profile, and the experience is dependant on how many friends (or similar-minded people) I can find also using the service. Once I have become comfortable using one service, I might be hesitant to "start over" at another, especially if none of my friends were using it either.
Simply put: we have seen, and will continue to see "MySpace killers" and "MySpace clones" boasting the latest AJAX-happy Web 2.0 goodness; but will the users of MySpace take notice? If they notice, will they care enough to make a switch?
MySpace is a very powerful web brand, and I for one think it has only just begun. If I were Rubert Murdoch, I would begin expanding the resources and revenue streams availble to it. When will "MySpace Records" begin distribution in the major retail outlets? And what about tv? How many pilot episodes is fox sitting on right now? Why allow a boardroom to make those decisions? The users on MySpace could do a better job selecting the next "big hit", all without expecting one red cent in compensation! After all, how many of these same users will be buying these same shows on DVD next year?
As MySpace has shown us: we a nation of aspiring and puedo-celebrities. In MySpace I see the potential for hundreds of new reality tv shows, dozens of new animated series, thousands of screenplays...I could go on and on. Properly managed, MySpace can, and I believe will, become a self-sustaining, media-generating, media-consuming machine.
just a quick point... (Score:2, Insightful)
understanding your comment (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry but this is not accurate. Myspace did a complete end run around the "old media" record companies. There are thousands of artists on there that would never have a shot at traditional distribution that are now leveraging the fact that they can be discovered, heard and shared with others. Perhaps you're refering to News Corp.'s recent acquisition, or the new Wired cover. It's not quite clear.
For example, their obsession with "child predators" as of late probably has little to do with protecting children and everything to do with making sure that their system is fenced off from "that big nasty mean world out there".
I'm not sure if I understand you here. Are you implying that people on myspace don't share links to the rest of the internet?
They are the "bread and circuses" of the information age. Feed em crap, keep em happy, and most of all keep their eyes and ears distracted from political and financial issues of the real world.
I believe this a valid criticism of The Spectacle at large and it's unfair to level this complaint solely at Myspace. I mean really, what distinguishes Myspace from NBC? Or nearly any other facet of popular American culture for that matter. I'm surprised how blindly biased the supposedly scientific Slashdot community is towards Myspace. This is generally without even trying the site out and is often based on a simplified caricature of the typical user profile. It's a meme run amok. Not everyone on the site is in high school.
Sounds Familiar (Score:4, Insightful)
In, oh, probably 1998 or so, I heard from a friend who worked at a tier-1 ISP that fully 2% of their total backbone traffic was to Geocities. This horrified us at the time, that such a huge portion of the 'net was devoted to people's crappy animated flame HR gifs.
As we all know, Geocites then went on to conquer the Internet.
Re:Worrisome, but not unexpected (Score:3, Insightful)
But be careful not to fall into the panic-trap. Life does not consist of a series of crisis. Most things that in principle can go wrong, do not, infact, go wrong. Theres a line between sensible caution and downrigth paranoia.
If you pay too much attention to never risking anything, you give up something else; your freedom.
Some people say, young females should never travel alone. I've read tips that you, as a single traveller, should refuse to take a room if the receptionist tells you the room-number out loud, someone could hear, you should insist he write it on a note for you, without saying it out loud. You should never ask for directions, as this marks you as a tourist. Nor should you talk in public, as your language and/or accent will do the same. You should never go backpacking in the wilderness alone. You should never post anything personally identifiable, certainly not a picture, online. You should never drink alcohol abroad.
Thing is, it migth be that following all of these (and many more) rules reduce your risk of say getting mugged in your vacation. That is, if you can even call whats left a vacation. It's a cost-benefit analysis.
Yes, I agree, you should be aware, you should think about what you're doing and make a conscious choise. But it's not a given that the "rigth" choice is always going to be the "safer" one. Personally I've broken each and every one of the "rules" above that I was able to. (the exception being doing things as a female, which is hard for me to pull off since I'm male)
If I'd followed all the "rules", I'd never have met my now-wife. I'd never have gotten to experience waking up to the sound of a herd of Reindeer running down the valley past my tent. I'd never have had gotten to know most of my closest friends. I'd never have visited Montreal, or Atlanta, or Berlin. Actually, coming to think of it, I'd have missed out on probably something like 40 of the nicest 50 things thats happened to me in my life. That's a steep price to pay for "security".
Being in a panic is how your "administration" likes you though. That way they can justify any and all invasions of privacy and any and all erosions of fundamental freedoms with the trump-all argument; "it's for your own safety."
In other news (Score:2, Insightful)
Craptification of the Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
Years later, when I first had access to it, maybe 90% of the internet was crap.
As it seems, now maybe 99% of the Internet is crap.
But, for as long as we have good search engines, it really doesn't matter that much.
Re:Worthless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Narcissism (Score:1, Insightful)
Look, myspace is full of 15 year old emo kids whinning. But, these kids update their blogs EVERYDAY. Wait ten years when theyve grow up and really have something to say. The concept of writing a blog of quality is alien to 15 year olds kids who simply equate myspace to an online mall.
Citizen-journalism is still just an adolesent. Imagine when myspace is full of adults, I hope the content will be better
Re:Narcissism (Score:3, Insightful)
The vast majority of people are merely average Joes. Everyone cannot be Einstein, nor can everyone be Crichton. That's just the way it is and the way it always will be. Most people don't post anything deeper because most people simply aren't deeper, and it's unlikely that they ever will be, in particular when they're born, raised, and socialized in a consumer orgy of a society that is itself incredibly inane.
You know, had myspace been available in Einstein's day, I don't think he would have used it much.
Well, not after they passed around that video he made of himself stumbling over pretending to be a jedi with that fake lightsaber..
Re:Narcissism (Score:2, Insightful)
First, you kick off your enlightening rumination on the detriment of narcissism with "I may be alone in this...." No, you are not alone in that sentiment here, and you know that. You expected a small army of geeks to rally beside you and say, "I agree! You're not alone!" It was intentional self-effacement to garner support for your argument. It was feigned humility. It was freaking narcissistic.
Second, and this is the more important, the increased ease of publication is not a bad thing. Yes, cyberspace is being flooded with a lot of dreck, but so what? As the quality of what's being posted declines (I agree that it is declining), the quality of search improves at a rate at least sufficient to stem the turning of the internet into, well, one big MySpace.
The creation of the internet was indeed a revolution, but it has improved our species's intellectual interfacing. The printing press did this. Just because the monks weren't the only ones pressing books didn't mean all books became crap--in fact, there were more books that weren't Bibles, go figure. Blogging is ultimately just as beneficial to us, if not more so, provided that we (with the help of wonderfully greedy and ambitious search engine corporations) continue to distill the cesspool of the internet.
In Frank Herbert's Dune series, there was a device called the dictatel, which ennabled a person to write merely by thinking. Let's imagine that every person on Earth has one of these devices, the products of which are recorded in a single massive database, searchable by all. What is important to understand is that all the MySpace rants, or their future equivalents, will not pollute the database for your allegedly less narcissistic and less inane purposes: the dreck will sink to the bottom, and a comprehensive search utility will enable instant retrieval of queries as pompously erudite as "principles of thermodynamics in general systems theory" or "notions of pathology in the 20th century."
Let me put this simply: There are still those who do not read Shakespeare. What you need to understand is that, thanks to the internet, more people are reading him.
Re:Narcissism (Score:5, Insightful)
Pessimism (Score:5, Insightful)
The only difference now is that we have SEARCH ENGINES, computers, and instant communication to help us sort through the bullshit. People like you like to ignore the fact that if only 1 out of every 99 people posting to myspace create something worthwhile, thats one more worthwhile thing on the internet to be found and shared.
I believe the viral spread of information has not reached its full potential, myspace is a step in the right direction. Google and other search engines are helping too. You act as if removing the hundreds of worthless expressions are worth the cost of forgoing one worthwhile contribution. You conveniently forget that by reading slashdot you are getting a selection of top articles for discussion over thousands of "unworthy" articles submited a day.
I think the only reason people like you get depressed is because you dont understand the internet. You don't see how instant communication changes the way things work. We can't rely on an intellectual authority anymore to tell us what is good and bad. Millions of people on myspace are expressing themselves in ways they never knew they could, even if most of it is terrible html they are having a learning experience and real social interaction. You want to take all that away because its easy to dismiss as trash? Don't add them as your friends, don't even sign up for myspace. In fact you should probably stop visiting slashdot, it should depress you that so many articles get submitted that are worthless, wasting the editors time, and our time when one slips through. You'd rather not have slashdot and save the internet the trouble right?