Why are People Calling MySpace ‘The Sinking Ship’?

MySpace is no more  ‘the social internet king’ ! But once (upon a time) it was. Founded in the year 2003, the social networking website dominated the social internet between the years 2006 and 2008. After April 2008, however, things began to change as Facebook became MySpace’s major competition. Today, people are calling MySpace ‘the sinking ship’.

Let us have a brief look at the Alexa rankings (as on 11th April, 2011) of MySpace.

Global Traffic Ranking: 72
US Traffic Ranking: 39
Time on Site: 4.21
Bounce Rate: 42.90

Now, let us also check the Alexa Rankings (as on 11th April, 2011) of Facebook.

Global Traffic Ranking: 2
US Traffic Ranking: 2
Time on Site: 33.67
Bounce Rate: 15.30

As it is obvious from the above statistics that MySpace has completely lost its stickiness, which is currently just 4.21, as compared to Facebook’s whooping 33.67. Certainly, Facebook has overtaken MySpace by all means in terms of unique number of users per month, pageviews and time on site.

Around January-February last year, MySpace had around 95 million unique users, which plummeted to 63 million around the same time this year. So, the social internet king of its time lost around 32 million users in a year. And News Corporation, MySpace’s parent company must really be worried to see the figures going down repeatedly.

When did matters take a serious turn?
If you remember, MySpace was acquired by News Corp for a sum of $580 million in July of 2005. And this is the time after which situations started to deteriorate, because News Corp’s primary motive was to earn more and more revenue from advertising, rather than focusing on the backend part of the social networking website to continuously improve user experience (which is what Facebook has actually been doing uptil now).

The Revamped MySpace Came to the Rescue!
As things began to get out of control, strategic planning was done to revamp the features of the social networking website. The revamped interface was launched with a view to making MySpace a ‘social entertainment destination’. Many of us thought that the new design of MySpace would give rise to a new direction. With the overhaul, the social networking website announced to engage the generation Y audience with a dosage of entertainment. And the rest is history!

Reasons for Failure
Ask users and they will tell you why they are no more glued to MaySpace. Some of the key reasons behind this social networking website’s failure are as follows.

It did not continuously focus on enhancing user experience.
It was slow to embrace advanced technologies like Ajax, instant messaging, email address import programs etc.
Flashy links and plenty of ads overwhelm people.
The blogging format irritates users.
Marketers have blown it up with ‘spammy marketing’.

So, is News Corp planning to sell off MySpace before it’s too late?

What do you say? Can MySpace rise up to glory once again? Are there any other reasons behind MySpace becoming a failure? Please feel free to share your experiences about using MySpace and why you said goodbye to this social networking platform. Or are you brand loyal (funny, eh)?