Dead Site Posting: The New Music-Oriented Myspace is a Graveyard Posted by Lucas G. on 08/27/13 | Filed under Opinion, Social Media, Tech

Remember way back in the era of dial-up and phones that didn’t have apps when the internet was like a new thing? Youtube was Ebaumsworld, and if you needed a question answered you would have to Ask Jeeves. Oh and of course, before Facebook, Vine, Instagram and Twitter, there was only one social media platform; Myspace.

The internet was (and still very much is) the wild west and Myspace was like that first settlement There was no bigger site and whether or not you had to sneak it by your parents you had one. It was the first site for sharing videos and music and was the godfather of social media; Facebook, Twitter and pretty much every other social media site wouldn’t be what they are today without MySpace. With that being said, what the fuck happened to it? How can a site that once ruled the interwebz fall so far? Even with their new “revamped” music angle Myspace isn’t even challenging the social media goliaths like Facebook and Twitter.



While the commercial, which packs some of musics biggest names and promising up-and-comers in, is only a few months old, it feels like it was years ago. The premise was noble: revamp the site using a few of music’s new faces - Chance The Rapper, Mac Miller, Riff Raff - as the poster children to get a new, younger audience in. Unfortunately it is just too little too late. The presentation is all well and good, but the layout and features, which are supposed to make it easy for creative people to discover and connect to like-minded people, are far from user friendly. I tried to sign up for a profile and without selectimg whether I was a “producer”, “DJ”, “artist”, “Athlete” or many other options, it seemed like “connecting” with others is a little difficult and pointless. In addition, you can’t share videos, there is an awkward sideways scroll, and frequently and, that is unable to be closed, pops-up; nothing will kill someone’s interest than pop-up ads.



Okay so maybe I am being a little biased and quick to judge. I mean how much can I really learn from just a few minutes toying with the website? So putting the layout features aside lets look at some of the numbers using a few of our favorite hip-hop friends. Take Chance The Rapper, who is one of the more prominent, new Myspacers. On Myspace, Chance has about 4,400 people “connected to” (AKA following) him. That number is dwarfed by his 194,000 Twitter followers and on Facebook he has 57,000 likes. Again, Myspace is new old-ish/newish, so maybe they just don’t have the following yet. Maybe I am being too quick to judge. That might be the case, but I think Chance’s activity on the site speaks volumes about its place in social media. His last post came on Aug 12, and before that, July 22 - before that July 10 and June 25 - I’d say that’s sporadic at best. I think it says a lot about a site when one of the face of the new movement doesn’t even treat it as a priority.

Mac Miller, Myspace’s other hip-hop representative has a similarly looking profile. His activity too is few and far between, as he only has 11 updates in the past month; most of which came in spurts of 3-4 on the same day. Also, with 42,783 connections his Myspace is a little more impressive than Chance’s, but the discrepancy between Myspace and his Twitter is incredible; Miller has over 4 million followers. If you can’t even get your spokespeople to update their accounts, how can you expect people to do the same? Why go to Myspace for one update a month when I could go to Twitter, where both emcees are highly active?

It’s seems like Myspace just doesn’t have anything original to make it marketable. Now, you need some hook or edge that another site can not give you. Look at Vine, no other site lets you upload videos like Vine and, with an original concept, they linked it to other social media and have become a new force. The new Myspace isn’t new, it's a sloppy rehash of Twitter and Facebook with no edge. What made Myspace great a decade ago was the fact that there was no other website like it, but now, thanks to its innovation there are bigger, more powerful sites just like it; the teacher became the student. I’m sure it will do alright, based on reputation alone, but if Myspace really wants to become a top dog again they will have to do a lot more than just ride the backs of a few artists.

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