George Parker: Social Networking … Is MySpace Proving it’s an Oxymoron?

I have to admit, I’m a bit of a pack rat, I keep far more shit than I should, and only throw stuff out when it begins to overwhelm me. Speaking of which, have you seen that new book about the two brothers who lived in a house on the upper West side of Manhattan many years ago and were found dead surrounded by tons and tons of stuff, including a Model T Ford in the dining room. What I want to know is how the fuck they got it in there? Anyway, the point of this ramble is that amongst all the shit destined for the trash, I found a copy of Wired from June, 2006, when it was still a half way decent magazine. On the cover is a very smug looking Rupert Murdoch, because he’d just bought MySpace for a little over a half billion dollars, and everyone was saying what a clever old fuck he was, ‘cos it was worth a lot more, seeing as how it was growing faster than Kudzu up a Georgia telegraph pole.

Three years on, the Wizened of Oz’s prediction of MySpace generating one billion dollars in revenues by 2010 is looking highly improbable, if not impossible. The fact that they recently laid off a third of their US staff and closed down a number of offices outside the US is not a good sign for the future growth of a company that three years ago, could do no wrong. Particularly when you consider that roughly half of MySpace’s total user base comes from outside the United States. It was recently announced that arch rival, Facebook’s worldwide user base is more than double that of MySpace, And Zuckernozzle claimed just this last week that Facebook was now profitable. The inescapable fact the Dirty Digger has to face up to is that while Facebook is adding users, MySpace is losing them. Even though they’ve cleaned up the nightmarish interface, far too many of the user profile pages on MySpace are either badly cluttered or increasingly neglected. Many of the early adopters have moved on. The users who remain are younger and poorer with household incomes of less than $25,000 a year. Hardly a prized demographic for blue-chip advertisers.

Which raises the sixty four million dollar question: What will we be saying about Facebook three years from now and very probably about Facebook’s successor, three years after that? Isn’t the problem with generic social networks the fact that they are “social,” attracting people who are inclined to be always looking for the next thing? As Groucho Marks put it so well… “Why would I want to belong to a club that was prepared to accept me?”

The truly successful and long lived social networks are those that cater to a niche demographic. SuicideGirls is a perfect example of this. (You can see my PSFK, LA Conference, interview with founder “Missy” below.) There are many others, most of which are proving they’re not overnight wonders and will be around for a long time, because they understand and cater to their audience. And best of all, they make money.

George Parker is the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com, without doubt, one of the most foul and annoying, piss & vinegar ad blogs on the planet. His new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, has just been published by Amazon and is currently setting the ether ablaze. He will continue to relentlessly promote the crap out of it until you are forced to stab yourself in the eyes with knitting needles.