Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Bollett
Speaker 1: and I am an editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Sitting across from me as usual laughing because
Speaker 1: we just had an out pick. And senior writer Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: you are a sad, strange little man. That was in
Speaker 1: fact the quote that I grabbed. And before we get
Speaker 1: into this topic, we have a little listener me. This
Speaker 1: listen mail comes from Ben. Ben says, Hey, guys, love
Speaker 1: your podcasts. What happened to my Space? I'm new to
Speaker 1: social networking, but remember friends of mine talking about my
Speaker 1: Space and how cool it was for some time. Then overnight,
Speaker 1: almost literally, there's Facebook, this new thing and has been
Speaker 1: ever since. What is it that separates the two and
Speaker 1: what is it that gives Facebook it's edge? Well, Ben,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a little bit about my Space, the
Speaker 1: history of it, what's happening with my Space now and
Speaker 1: kind of you know, it's sort of fall from grace really, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: As it turns out, Facebook is has housed in a
Speaker 1: giant cube in space and the people onboard are androids.
Speaker 1: That's no moon, that's a social networking site. You will
Speaker 1: be assimilated. Okay, no, none of that is true. No, no,
Speaker 1: that's not true. But it does sort of seem like
Speaker 1: they popped up out of nowhere and took over and
Speaker 1: about the same time. Actually, my Space started back in
Speaker 1: two thousand three. Man, that's really old. Yeah, well at
Speaker 1: least in Internet terms. Internet terms of this pretty old.
Speaker 1: What's weird is that I sit there and I think
Speaker 1: about how long some of these things have been around,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like I've been using Twitter forever, and
Speaker 1: I think, wait a minute, it's been a little over
Speaker 1: two years. That's it. Um. So with with my Space.
Speaker 1: It began as a for profit company back in two
Speaker 1: thousand three. And if you joined my Space back in
Speaker 1: the day, you might be familiar with Tom. He was
Speaker 1: your first friend on my Space. Yes, he was referred
Speaker 1: to Tom Anderson, one of the co founders of the
Speaker 1: of MySpace dot com. And um, Tom was the automatic
Speaker 1: first friend you had, and then you could search for
Speaker 1: other friends using things like you know their email addresses? Yes,
Speaker 1: so you could look around and join um and uh,
Speaker 1: request friends with all the people you know, and then
Speaker 1: build up your network that way, same way as most
Speaker 1: social networks work. Really, yes, I am and looking at
Speaker 1: the diagram we have on our now aging article on
Speaker 1: my Space, it reminds me of LinkedIn, Like you had
Speaker 1: circles of friends, you know you friends and friends of
Speaker 1: friends and friends and friends of friends, which really it
Speaker 1: looks just like what Zuckerberg would call the social when
Speaker 1: he steps up in front of like, you know, he
Speaker 1: he would have his own grid of showing the social
Speaker 1: network and how your friends. You have a you have
Speaker 1: a circle of friends, and then they have their own
Speaker 1: circle of friends, some of which overlap your circle and
Speaker 1: some which don't. And then what will be really what's
Speaker 1: really interesting is when you start finding connections between friends
Speaker 1: that you didn't know existed, Like you had you have
Speaker 1: a friend over here who's from your let's say baseball team,
Speaker 1: like you played baseball with them, and a friend over
Speaker 1: on the other side who was in um uh a
Speaker 1: class with you at a college that was across the
Speaker 1: country from where you played baseball, and yet these two
Speaker 1: people are also friends with each other. And then you think,
Speaker 1: how the heck did that happen, And did you realize
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I'm not the connecting point for these people.
Speaker 1: They knew each other before without independently of knowing me.
Speaker 1: Small world, as they say. Yes, you know when you
Speaker 1: said a moment ago connections between friends you didn't even
Speaker 1: know existed, I thought, somehow you found out about my
Speaker 1: imaginary friends, and I was kind of go, how did
Speaker 1: you know a totally different social networking site, non space
Speaker 1: is what that was called. So my imaginary friendster? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh well, and and Friendster was around. Actually, Friendster was
Speaker 1: the dominant social networking site back when my Space first arrived.
Speaker 1: So my Space goes online around two thousand three, end
Speaker 1: of two thousand three, and Facebook pops up at the
Speaker 1: beginning of two thousand four, So that that was straight
Speaker 1: again there we go. That was Facebook popping and your
Speaker 1: your face has been booked, as they used to say
Speaker 1: in my head. So anyway, Facebook popped up in around
Speaker 1: two thousand four. And when Facebook first started it was
Speaker 1: limited to college students. It was later opened up to
Speaker 1: high school students and college students. Actually, originally it was
Speaker 1: just Harvard students, but indeed Harvard then college, then high
Speaker 1: school then eventually everyone else. Well, there was a two
Speaker 1: year period where Facebook was not open to the public, yes,
Speaker 1: but my Space was. So my Space got a jump
Speaker 1: on Facebook on anyone who was not currently in school.
Speaker 1: I remember at this time I was out of school.
Speaker 1: I could not join Facebook when it first started because
Speaker 1: I no longer had a college email address, so I
Speaker 1: created a profile on my Space. Many of my friends
Speaker 1: also created profiles on my Space, so my space got
Speaker 1: a pretty big jump early on. I got a lot
Speaker 1: of users. Um, and it had a different style from Facebook.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, it has a much different style from Facebook.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, one of the ways that
Speaker 1: I first became affiliated or I'm sorry, more aware of
Speaker 1: my space was I thought of it as a band
Speaker 1: site because b A N D not B A N
Speaker 1: N E D depends on where you work, but because
Speaker 1: it was both in some instances. This is true um
Speaker 1: and probably still has but yeah, I mean it was.
Speaker 1: That was one of the things that I thought was
Speaker 1: really neat about my my spaces. Um. And for people
Speaker 1: in independent label bands like myself, Um, you could post
Speaker 1: samples of your music up, the whole songs and give
Speaker 1: people an opportunity to hear it and I actually thought, uh, initially,
Speaker 1: I thought that that's what the site was for, was
Speaker 1: for bands to put music up in musicians to work
Speaker 1: with other musicians. Very prescient of you, Yes, as it
Speaker 1: turns up, but we'll get into that. Yes, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that was that. That was kind of funny because I
Speaker 1: thought it was specifically for that, and it had it. Definitely,
Speaker 1: my Space had a huge advantage over Facebook as far
Speaker 1: as sharing things like getting it discovering bands. Yes, my
Speaker 1: Space was superior to Facebook in that sense, even after
Speaker 1: Facebook went public, because Facebook groups were primitive compared to
Speaker 1: my Space band pages. So on a band page you
Speaker 1: could find not just music, but also things like schedules
Speaker 1: and blog posts, photo albums, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: just like any person's profile. That's the other thing is
Speaker 1: my Space allowed you to have a customizable profile page,
Speaker 1: which was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing
Speaker 1: in the sense of if you had some if you
Speaker 1: had really good design skills, you could create an attractive,
Speaker 1: easily readable my Space layout. You could even if you
Speaker 1: wanted to. You could incorporate things like songs that you
Speaker 1: really liked. You could find songs on my Space and
Speaker 1: add them to your profile. Uh. Sadly, this usually resulted
Speaker 1: in auto play, which means meant that if you were
Speaker 1: visiting someone else's profile and they picked a song that
Speaker 1: you hated, uh, you know, it would suddenly start blasting
Speaker 1: out of your computer until you either muted it, muted
Speaker 1: your computer, or found the um the control on the
Speaker 1: profile page and and paused it. And because those pages
Speaker 1: were customizable, the control was not always in the same spot. Yes,
Speaker 1: it became really irritating. Like you'd go to like, I
Speaker 1: have friends and I love them to death, but my god,
Speaker 1: they have terrible music. Terrible music, tastes horrible. Some of
Speaker 1: them don't even know who the Ramons were, that's how
Speaker 1: bad they were. Yeah, for a moment, I thought you
Speaker 1: were talking about me, but then I realized I know
Speaker 1: who the remon are, so it's probably not. No, not
Speaker 1: talking about you. I've listened to you play. Your band's
Speaker 1: music was not. It did not make me want to
Speaker 1: go out on a rampage, all right, But some of
Speaker 1: my friends had music that did. Um Yeah, especially if
Speaker 1: they picked really irritating uh Internet songs. Like there was
Speaker 1: one person who had what was it the it was
Speaker 1: essentially the same people who did the hamster dance music. Oh,
Speaker 1: the the really high pitched stuff. It wasn't crazy Frog.
Speaker 1: That's it crazy Frog. Oh I Love you the Death Girl.
Speaker 1: But man, that crazy Frog song on auto play just
Speaker 1: it was enough for me not to go and visit
Speaker 1: your profile. So anyway, the customizable profile was a blessing
Speaker 1: and a curse. It actually was something that it had
Speaker 1: that Friendster did not have, and that may have contributed
Speaker 1: to people adopting my Space over friendster Um. And again,
Speaker 1: because it was open to everyone, it wasn't just restricted
Speaker 1: to college students, it meant that my Space got a
Speaker 1: lot of people pretty quickly. So I'm sorry you were
Speaker 1: about to say, I was just also going to add
Speaker 1: that apparently my Space was set up on a better platform,
Speaker 1: which also aided it over Friendster because friendster Um had
Speaker 1: difficulty with the amount of traffic it was getting. It
Speaker 1: grew very quickly, and it really kind of outgrew itself
Speaker 1: very quickly to the point where an alternative like my Space,
Speaker 1: which was which had the traffic disseminated over the company's
Speaker 1: network more efficiently, was able to handle the load. And um,
Speaker 1: we all know on the Internet, people don't wait around
Speaker 1: once they're Even when their favorite site UH starts having
Speaker 1: difficulties or is completely reformat it in a way that
Speaker 1: makes it unpopular to use, people will bolt even from
Speaker 1: their most favorite sites, or at least about it at length.
Speaker 1: Yes to anyone who will listen, because that's one of
Speaker 1: the things about Facebook is that it kept During this time,
Speaker 1: Facebook changed it's its user interface a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and each time it's it's the same today. Each time
Speaker 1: Facebook does that, uh, you could expect the next week
Speaker 1: to be filled with complaints about Facebook's new user interface,
Speaker 1: both on Facebook and also on Twitter. Yes, I particularly
Speaker 1: enjoy how it seems like of people are screaming about
Speaker 1: the layout. Why did they put fill in the blank here?
Speaker 1: Over filling the blank there? Because they can't find the thing.
Speaker 1: And then there's always one person. There's always one, or
Speaker 1: it could be more, but there's always one of goes,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't think it's that bad. I'm
Speaker 1: usually the one who says I can't I don't think
Speaker 1: it's that bad. Here's the thing is that by the
Speaker 1: following month, everyone's forgotten about it, and then the next
Speaker 1: change becomes the one that you're like, oh, seriously, this
Speaker 1: is terrible. I can't believe you did this. And you're like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. You hated these changes back when they
Speaker 1: made them like three months ago. Why is it now
Speaker 1: the best thing ever? And you hate new changes because
Speaker 1: we're people, well friends. Store was was just hard, outright
Speaker 1: hard to use at that point, and my Space was there.
Speaker 1: Facebook was still restricted to a certain group. So my
Speaker 1: Space took off and it was a very popular site
Speaker 1: for a very very long time. It'll let you create
Speaker 1: photo albums, that let you create a blog on your
Speaker 1: MySpace profile. You could leave messages for other people. Eventually
Speaker 1: you could chat with other people through an instant messaging
Speaker 1: on on the MySpace platform. Of course, they also had
Speaker 1: to be a logged into my Space at that time
Speaker 1: for the chat to work, but you could leave messages
Speaker 1: if they weren't. Um. So, I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of the functionality that we later saw built into other
Speaker 1: social networking sites. And uh, it was doing really well,
Speaker 1: in fact, so well that in two thousand five another
Speaker 1: company swooped in and um and paid a pretty penny
Speaker 1: for MySpace dot com. Yes more than a pretty penny. Actually,
Speaker 1: it was Intermix, the company that owned my Space. Um.
Speaker 1: They were acquired by a little known magnet from Australia. Yes,
Speaker 1: Mr Murdock, Rupert Murdock, scourge of the Internet. Yeah, Rupert Murdoch.
Speaker 1: Who who who probably has lost more money and and
Speaker 1: won it back again than I will ever see in
Speaker 1: my entire life. Um. His his, His company Newscore purchased
Speaker 1: MySpace dot Com in two thousand five for five hundred
Speaker 1: eighty million dollars. It's million with an M. Yes. Um.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, I went back to look at the coverage
Speaker 1: at that time because I've thought of my space is
Speaker 1: being synonymous with Fox and News Corps for so long
Speaker 1: that I was I was trying to get a sense
Speaker 1: of what happened and when it happened and how much
Speaker 1: it was. And it was funny because the coverage at
Speaker 1: the time said that news Corps had acquired Intermix theoretically
Speaker 1: to gain my Space. So it's funny because I think
Speaker 1: of it specifically in those terms. But um, there were
Speaker 1: other technologies that that Intermix had that were not nearly
Speaker 1: the newsmaker that that my Space was. I would say,
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say that my Space was
Speaker 1: definitely the crown jewel of the acquisition for news corp.
Speaker 1: And they thought it was going to make them a
Speaker 1: whole lot of money. Well, at the time, my Space
Speaker 1: was incredibly successful. There was no sign that that was
Speaker 1: going to change at all. Yes, as far as anyone
Speaker 1: could tell, my Space was just going to keep on growing.
Speaker 1: It was going to be a monster and see double
Speaker 1: digit growth each year and um, and this was two
Speaker 1: thousand five. Two thousand six is what I think the
Speaker 1: event that eventually reverse the fortunes of MySpace dot com. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I think before we go on to that, sure we
Speaker 1: should add that my Space you know, talking about the
Speaker 1: growth and you're saying, okay, so what does maybe what
Speaker 1: does the growth mean? You know, Okay, so they've got
Speaker 1: lots of people, they're growing at a very very rapid pace. Well,
Speaker 1: they were making their money off of advertising. So the
Speaker 1: more people that visit your site, um and click on advertising,
Speaker 1: the more money the site makes. So news Corpus looking
Speaker 1: at this is an opportunity for advertising dollars and that's important.
Speaker 1: I think it will be important because of the two
Speaker 1: thousand six part. Yeah, because clearly the thing that you're
Speaker 1: advertising relies upon is heavy traffic. Yes, the heavier of
Speaker 1: the traffic, the more money you make. If the traffic
Speaker 1: starts to slack off, then you don't make as much money.
Speaker 1: And if the traffic lacks off enough, you start to
Speaker 1: lose money. Right. So that's that's that was their income stream,
Speaker 1: right And Murdoch is known for having pretty um concrete
Speaker 1: ideas of how profitable a business needs to be in
Speaker 1: order for it to be worthwhile. We didn't get to
Speaker 1: be successful as successful as he is by not having
Speaker 1: any business acumen. He is certainly not a charity. Um.
Speaker 1: He is in the business of making money and he's
Speaker 1: very very good at it. Yes. So anyway, that's that
Speaker 1: no one could have seen in two thousand five necessarily
Speaker 1: that my Space was going to be headed for a
Speaker 1: reversal unfortune. However, in two thousand and six, that's when
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg and crew opened up Facebook to the general public. Yes,
Speaker 1: and of course traffic took off at that point because
Speaker 1: Facebook was an alternative to my Space. People wanted to
Speaker 1: see what it was about. They tried it out, they
Speaker 1: liked it. Also, they had a lot of young folks
Speaker 1: on Facebook at that point, because you had people who
Speaker 1: were either either you know, in high school just getting
Speaker 1: into college, or maybe you have just graduated from college,
Speaker 1: but they had created a profile back when they were
Speaker 1: in college. So uh so you have this young, dynamic
Speaker 1: audience that's already built into your social network. There were
Speaker 1: also some stories in the news about um about predators
Speaker 1: on my Space. There was it actually became kind of prevalent.
Speaker 1: In fact, my Space rightly or wrongly, began to develop
Speaker 1: a reputation as being a wretched hive of scum and
Speaker 1: villainy if you were um It's I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: that reputation was actually earned, but it certainly had it.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember people saying, like I remember seeing
Speaker 1: news interviews where kids were saying they preferred Facebook over
Speaker 1: my Space because my Space was where all the sleazy
Speaker 1: people were, the people you don't want to have contact with,
Speaker 1: strangers who uh would try and befriend you, and it
Speaker 1: was just creepy and Facebook was the friendly site. Well
Speaker 1: I will I will say this. Another thing that that
Speaker 1: my Space had that really bugged me was um I.
Speaker 1: When I first signed up for a MySpace account, UM
Speaker 1: I did have Tom as a friend. I also had
Speaker 1: solicitations from all kinds of spammers almost immediately, not immediately,
Speaker 1: but very close to it, and it it didn't seem
Speaker 1: what I like, what I was doing with my settings
Speaker 1: affected any of it. So eventually got fed up and
Speaker 1: left because my Space hadn't really gotten a grip on that.
Speaker 1: It seems that I have since started a newer account
Speaker 1: on my Space, I don't really use it for anything
Speaker 1: other than to keep up with a couple of friends
Speaker 1: that I only know we're on my space, and um,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's set as private as it will go.
Speaker 1: And no, I have not gotten anything from anybody, including
Speaker 1: the friends I tried to keep up with. Very sorry,
Speaker 1: so two thousand and six. Facebook was public in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight and or two thousand nine, depending upon whom
Speaker 1: you consult, Facebook overtakes my Space in traffic, yes, so
Speaker 1: keep in mind my Space had an enormous head start
Speaker 1: did but Facebook is growing faster than my spaces and
Speaker 1: in fact, in some quarters, my Space is posting a
Speaker 1: loss in total number of visitors. So there was a
Speaker 1: point where Facebook was just growing faster, like both companies
Speaker 1: were growing, but Facebook was growing leaps and bounds ahead
Speaker 1: of my Space, and then eventually Facebook continued to grow
Speaker 1: and my Space stopped growing, and a VEC started to
Speaker 1: to lose members as people just let their accounts die,
Speaker 1: kind of like Pullett did. Um, I I can tell
Speaker 1: you so two thousand eight is where we see the
Speaker 1: Facebook start to take the lead. Two thousand eight, coincidentally
Speaker 1: is the year where I received my last message from
Speaker 1: a friend on my Space. I logged into my account
Speaker 1: to check and the last time I received a message
Speaker 1: from someone I actually know, as opposed to some random
Speaker 1: update from a group that I belonged to, it was
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. Well. Um. On a recent article on
Speaker 1: cnet from one of my favorites net writers don Rie
Speaker 1: Singer Um, they noted that currently here in my Space
Speaker 1: still has more than a hundred million users worldwide. However,
Speaker 1: Facebook has more than five hundred million active users and
Speaker 1: Twitter has about a hundred seventy five million registered users registered,
Speaker 1: meaning all those people and that includes all those people
Speaker 1: that got on Twitter, posted one tweet and left and
Speaker 1: never came back. Still, that's a lot of users compared
Speaker 1: to my Space, especially with Twitter is a fledgling service
Speaker 1: compared to my Space, fledgling because Twitter, I see where
Speaker 1: what you did there? Um, so yes, they won't hear
Speaker 1: another so that that that is the uh that sort
Speaker 1: of brings us to where we are now, because two
Speaker 1: things have happened recently that have put my Space back
Speaker 1: in the news. One is the redesign. Yeah, my Space
Speaker 1: is undergoing a massive redesign, and in fact, they're kind
Speaker 1: of positioning themselves as no longer being a social networking site. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're going to be partnering with sites like Facebook, which
Speaker 1: you know, that's kind of weird. Yeah, a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago would have been unthinkable. But they instead they're
Speaker 1: positioning themselves as a social entertainment site. So it's going
Speaker 1: to be kind of a portal in a way for
Speaker 1: various uh forms of entertainment. We're talking about music, movies, television,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Actually, the company competitor that immediately
Speaker 1: came to mind was not Facebook in that case, but Yahoo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's what Yahoo does so well, serve as a
Speaker 1: portal for that kind of material. Yeah. Who yeah, Who's
Speaker 1: kind of transitioned from being a search engine to a
Speaker 1: uh content portal. Yes, So the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: with MySpace. It looks like it's going to specifically be
Speaker 1: stuff like music videos and uh movies, television that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And there still will be social elements at play,
Speaker 1: and you will still be able to have a social
Speaker 1: profile on MySpace, but the focus will no longer be
Speaker 1: on the profile page. It will be on these these
Speaker 1: pages about various kinds of entertainment. Um. I have not
Speaker 1: received this new version of my Space as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast. They're rolling it out gradually in blocks,
Speaker 1: and I still have the old profile based MySpace. Yes,
Speaker 1: I do as well. Um, they are supposed to be
Speaker 1: getting it out to everyone by the end of November. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's when we're recording this is the is early November,
Speaker 1: so we will probably, I'm sure we will go back
Speaker 1: to our desks and it will be there by the
Speaker 1: time that we finish. Very well, may have access to it.
Speaker 1: But so we can't really talk from a personal perspective
Speaker 1: what this new redesign is really going to do and
Speaker 1: whether whether or not it will be enough to keep
Speaker 1: my Space going after all the hits it's taken over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years. And I think that kind
Speaker 1: of brings us to the other item in the news
Speaker 1: that has uh brought my Space into focus again. Yes,
Speaker 1: now going back to my earlier comment on my Space
Speaker 1: relying so heavily on advertising. Facebook also uses advertising, but
Speaker 1: they have One of the things that my Space had
Speaker 1: to work to emulate was Facebook's ability to integrate things
Speaker 1: like games. Uh. You know, Facebook is something of a
Speaker 1: games destination, casual gaming destination for many many people. Of course,
Speaker 1: it made Zinga a very very uh um well, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say, trying to think of the word I
Speaker 1: want to use here. Well, successful, yes, but I mean
Speaker 1: that they're worth you would imagine not releasing you know, uh,
Speaker 1: console games or PC games, but they really launched them
Speaker 1: into being a very uh uh high value company from
Speaker 1: Facebook alone, which which apparently if you had said that
Speaker 1: backward Facebook first released the the a p I, you
Speaker 1: would have said, what, No, there's no way. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting tool for developers, but there's no
Speaker 1: way you would ever really make money off it unless
Speaker 1: you were selling people's information to advertisers. Because it turns
Speaker 1: out that's not entirely true. Yeah, and my Space, my
Speaker 1: space is model just wasn't keeping up with Facebook's ability
Speaker 1: to use that information and build on that. So Facebook
Speaker 1: has sort of outpaced it in worth as well, which
Speaker 1: is made Mr. Murdoch a very unhappy man and he's
Speaker 1: not the only one. So the The News Corps President
Speaker 1: and chief operating Officer Chase Kerry was recently quoted as saying,
Speaker 1: we've been clear that my Space is a problem. That's
Speaker 1: not something you want to hear if you're working at
Speaker 1: my Space. Yeah, yeah, you don't want to hear that
Speaker 1: your company is a problem. So we need to redefine
Speaker 1: and rebuild this business. We've made adjustments in the costs, sure,
Speaker 1: and most importantly in the last few weeks, we have
Speaker 1: relaunched my Space with a focus on social entertainment, which
Speaker 1: is what we were talking about just a second ago. Um.
Speaker 1: But he further went on to say current losses are
Speaker 1: not acceptable or sustainable. That's also bad news. Our current
Speaker 1: management did not create these losses, but they know we
Speaker 1: have to address them. And as long as we know
Speaker 1: where the blame lies, well he says, they didn't create them,
Speaker 1: So it's the previous the previous uh management, not the
Speaker 1: current management. Yeah, it's ah, that's those are some harsh words.
Speaker 1: And and my Space has famously had some pretty big
Speaker 1: rounds of layoffs over the last couple of years well,
Speaker 1: as Risinger said Uh, I'm quoting him. He said, carry
Speaker 1: said that my space is time is running out, so
Speaker 1: they do not It's not just that they see, uh
Speaker 1: the losses is not being sustainable. What he's saying is
Speaker 1: if we don't fin this soon, it means that we're
Speaker 1: not going to have a site. Yeah, add revenue analyst
Speaker 1: E Marketer released a report saying that my Space is
Speaker 1: ad revenue is expected to drop to two hundred ninety
Speaker 1: seven million dollars in eleven. But back in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine it was earning four hundred seventy million dollars, So
Speaker 1: not quite a fifty drop in two years, but that's significant.
Speaker 1: I mean, going from four seventy million to two seven
Speaker 1: million in two years is not good. So yeah, my
Speaker 1: Space has got to He's got an uphill battle to fight.
Speaker 1: So assuming that this relaunch actually captivates some some interest
Speaker 1: and perhaps the you know, marrying it so that it
Speaker 1: works with Facebook as opposed to competing against Facebook, that
Speaker 1: might that might be enough to help save it. Um,
Speaker 1: We'll have to wait and see, because uh, I think
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people just you know, they
Speaker 1: don't even my Space is not even in their mind
Speaker 1: space anymore. Yeah, there's no mind share. If you like
Speaker 1: that term, I don't, but I'll use it. Yes. Well,
Speaker 1: a phrase that it has gone around a lot, at
Speaker 1: least in the United States during the economic downturn of
Speaker 1: the last few years is the too big to fail.
Speaker 1: And I think there's probably no such thing for Internet
Speaker 1: sites that's too big to fail. My Space would have
Speaker 1: been one of those things. Facebook to Facebook right now,
Speaker 1: you would think it's too big to fail. But if
Speaker 1: you know, if the story of my my Space has
Speaker 1: had anything to go by, it's you know. The lesson
Speaker 1: there is that you can't rest on your laurels. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't ignore competition, and you can't just
Speaker 1: assume that the model that's working today is going to
Speaker 1: work tomorrow. You'll always have to be innovating and ready
Speaker 1: to move once things start to shift. Um, which sounds
Speaker 1: exhausting to me. Well, yes, I'm sure. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: the stuff I've read about the new MySpace design seems
Speaker 1: fairly positive. Most of what I see as well, it's
Speaker 1: very nice. But is it too late? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: it may not be. Uh. And it also maybe that
Speaker 1: News Corp Is able to leverage it's new asset it's
Speaker 1: redesigned MySpace in a smaller capacity and gradually build it
Speaker 1: back up to what it once was. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it's going to have to overcome
Speaker 1: a lot of the bad publicity, a lot of the
Speaker 1: bad press over the past few years, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the momentum on the side of Facebook because people
Speaker 1: like That's one of the things that Facebook has done
Speaker 1: so well in integrating the other other websites, um, you know,
Speaker 1: making a like feature available on other websites. You go
Speaker 1: to a um, you know, a news site, you find
Speaker 1: an article that you think is interesting, and you, you know,
Speaker 1: press the button on the site. Well, you know, that's
Speaker 1: the big blue button that people are getting used to
Speaker 1: a lot of cases there is a MySpace button, but
Speaker 1: now you know, it's who's who's clicking that besides the
Speaker 1: people who wrote the article. So um nice, but hey,
Speaker 1: I do it. I do it for Facebook. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna have to overcome that that thing where
Speaker 1: you know, people are going to the hub, and the
Speaker 1: hub right now is Facebook. Here's here's one way I
Speaker 1: can see it. Follow me with this one. I'm following,
Speaker 1: all right. So Newscore owns my Space. Yes, Newscore owns Fox. Yes.
Speaker 1: What if they did a two pronged attack where they
Speaker 1: very aggressively attacked any unauthorized videos from Fox Networks on
Speaker 1: any other site including YouTube, Yeah, but had authorized versions
Speaker 1: on my Space and allowed you to link to those
Speaker 1: versions on your Facebook account. Glee could save my Space. Um,
Speaker 1: you know what, that is the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: a shrewd business person would probably take to heart and
Speaker 1: go after. We knew somebody who let me give you
Speaker 1: the address to which you can write to the big check. Well,
Speaker 1: considering he wants to put the Wall Street Journal back
Speaker 1: behind a paywall, I'm sure he's already thought of it.
Speaker 1: But um, but just in case that address is I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. I'm just kidding, all right, then, So let's
Speaker 1: wrap this up. Will it survive? Um, probably at least
Speaker 1: for the the immediate time now, you know, my space
Speaker 1: is as we alluded to earlier, they're looking at time
Speaker 1: now in quarters, not years. So it could be interesting
Speaker 1: to see if news Corp. Would actually sell off the
Speaker 1: asset to someone else, Because I don't I don't foresee
Speaker 1: this becoming like an issue with Cool where they just
Speaker 1: pull the plug one day and there's no longer on MySpace.
Speaker 1: No that those uh, those subscribers are valuable assets still,
Speaker 1: so they may sell it off to someone else. I
Speaker 1: wonder who might purchase that. I would hope it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be Google, because they've pretty much demonstrated that the social
Speaker 1: networking thing and Google don't work so well, at least
Speaker 1: on the United States. Actually, the Purple guys that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier would be a good no. I mean that
Speaker 1: we're all This is a wouldn't surprise me if Facebook
Speaker 1: did it. Yeah, Facebook purchasing MySpace so that it would
Speaker 1: have the access to the social entertainment I mean because
Speaker 1: still to this day, the MySpace band page is I
Speaker 1: would say, if not superior, at least equal to Facebook
Speaker 1: groups that are formed around bands fair enough, and of
Speaker 1: course friend Feed another acquisition by Facebook. They've pretty much
Speaker 1: almost left it alone and I haven't seen a big
Speaker 1: change that some of the technology into Facebook though, right,
Speaker 1: But they've kind of left it alone and left it
Speaker 1: its own site. So they might have they might leave
Speaker 1: my Space and independent in sight even if they did
Speaker 1: acquire it, But I don't know. They may. It's hard
Speaker 1: to say at this point because it's still a viable property.
Speaker 1: I think News Corps still hopes to get something out
Speaker 1: of it if they can. I'm wondering if one of
Speaker 1: us will make a prediction about my Space at the
Speaker 1: end of the year. Well, you know, that's the thing
Speaker 1: is that we're recording this in the early November, which
Speaker 1: means pretty soon we are going to have to record
Speaker 1: our Technology Predictions episode eleven. It also means we'll have
Speaker 1: to go through the predictions episode we did for twenty
Speaker 1: ten and see how many we got completely wrong. I'm
Speaker 1: not letting you have access to the scoreboard this time. No,
Speaker 1: I'll get an impartial judge. It'll be it'll be my
Speaker 1: friend Juan Stricklando. Okay, anyway, let's wrap this up. If
Speaker 1: you guys have a topic you would like us to tackle,
Speaker 1: you can let us know one this is gonna sound bad.
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook. Not my Space because we aren't there,
Speaker 1: but Twitter and Facebook you can fight us. Our handle
Speaker 1: is tech dot HSW or you can email us and
Speaker 1: that address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and we will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Um, Actually this was just handed to me. It
Speaker 1: looks like how stuff works dot Com now has an
Speaker 1: iPhone app. Sweet, that's awesome. Yeah, actually, um, I got
Speaker 1: to to take a look at this earlier, and guys,
Speaker 1: this is pretty cool. The iPhone app is sort of
Speaker 1: a way to integrate all the cool stuff we do
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. So you, guys may
Speaker 1: have listened to one of our podcasts and we talked
Speaker 1: about there's this great article on the site, but you're
Speaker 1: not at your computer, so you can't really check it. Well.
Speaker 1: The iPhone app actually lets you browse articles and blog posts,
Speaker 1: even lets you interact on Facebook and Twitter, and you
Speaker 1: can listen to podcasts at the same time. And it
Speaker 1: has all the how stuff Works dot Com podcasts on it,
Speaker 1: not just ours, but you know good ones too, so
Speaker 1: you can listen to those and look at the articles
Speaker 1: and and go on Facebook and Twitter. And it's should
Speaker 1: work perfectly with your iPhones and iPod touches. Awesome. What's
Speaker 1: it looks like. It's now available on the iTunes Store,
Speaker 1: so that's good to know. How much does it cost?
Speaker 1: It's freeze Ah, brought to you by the reinvented two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you