MySpace
121 2nd Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
The year 2003 was the year of the internet. Half the people in the Web 2.0 digital world didn’t own their own digital camera yet and relied on scanned prints or webcam images of themselves to represent their avatars. The cool people had their own two or three megapixel cameras. It began as the year of Friendster and ended as the year of MySpace.
MySpace wouldn’t have become MySpace if the stupid Friendster servers didn’t stop working in the middle of summer 2003. You got all the bored teenagers addicted to Web 2.0 like crack and then you take it away from them by not investing in more efficient servers. Bad bad Friendster. On top of that, a rumor spread that you considered charging users to contact people. Bad bad bad Friendster!
So after the Friendster exodus occurred around Summer 2003, MySpace became as popular as Yelp is today. It was comfortably popular. Rockstars in Los Angeles who currently own hundreds of thousands of friends on their MySpace page owned a mere few hundred and that was a high number compared to Friendster. Friendster limited the number of friends you can add and MySpace was no-holds-barred.
On top of that, MySpace was in general A LOT better than Friendster. The servers weren’t slow. There was a blog, a message board, and the ability to edit your own html on your page. You carried more confidence that the website wouldn’t abruptly fail when you were writing your friend a long message so communication between friends was a lot better. The teenagers who were addicted to the internet went fanatical over the new website. I was 20-years-old and the website was fun and pretentious. Pretentiousness that wasn’t profitable.
Let’s jump five years later. All the teenagers are in their early to mid-20s now. They’ve become slightly wrinkled around the eyes and fatter. Pretentiousness became profitable. Bands and miscellaneous groups that are dependent on the website for promotion are almost as prevalent as the number of people that are actually on the website. The website is a large gentrified digital mall now. It’s lost its edge.
A few days ago, I was offered money to give up my MySpace handle to a hip-hop artist. Do you want to know what I said? I said I’m interested. If I can cash in from what MySpace has become today, I say this is a catalyst to buck Yahoo 2.0. I’m under surveillance when I click on each page and I imagine five vulture companies that separately advertise “VEGAN GOODS CLICK HERE” or something else based on my interests (in other words, MySpace allows advertisers to record my information to profit off me) are making a moneybag.
Besides the dynamics of the website, I can’t rant about the people on here because they represent the normal demographic of the US population. I did get contacted by my biological mother. Problem was, I already have one.
Useful: 6 Funny: 7 Cool: 7
6/3/2008