Falling out of Space

I write a lot about social networks for someone that is more in the local vertical, but I’ll have plenty of time to talk about local search. Who knows how long the new SNs will be around.

There’s a pretty good write up on publishing 2.0 about the fall of MySpace. I don’t agree with the rejection of seasonality as a factor, but I do think that certain signs point to a downturn. Seasonality is a factor, it’s spring people at college are onine less, that’s just a fact. The argument that it wasn’t a factor last year is misguided. MySpace’s penetration in the college market is much higher than it was at this time last year (okay it’s just bigger in general), isn’t it possible that the new users that were added are more of the trend-following-less-loyal type of user, not the always-on-no-matter-what-time-or-day it is early-adopter? The same thing happened with facebook’s herd of college students last year. Facebook’s data from when it was thefacebook is no longer available through alexa, but it went through a huge downturn when schools let out - the same trend seems to be starting up again (weekly traffic rank 66, 3 month avg. 55).

More important however, is Guy Kawaski’s (gasp) Focus Group. Seasonality is something that will always happen, but Guy’s focus group seems to indicate that permanent changes are coming. Sure the sample was way too small to mean anything, but the implications from the study are pretty much in line with what I would expect from a “trendy” company. The problem is a company will never survive by being cool. Being cool means sooner or later everyone is going to want what you have, when the mass-audience arives early adopters will leave and eventually the rest will once again follow, leaving your “cool” brand behind. In 5 years no one will talk about MySpace or Facebook unless they drastically change their focus. To survive, both companies need to find target audiences with higher loyalty and greater attention span. Hello Boomers.

Related: The Wrinkled-Facebook