[Sigia-l] Your take on MySpace

[Debi Jones]

Fair enough.  Those who populated Geocities grew up.  The technology
grew up and offered us more interesting choices.  People became more
sophisticated and many of them moved to Yahoo! Groups which was the
communication and community solution between Geocities and MySpace. 
Also, looking to other geolocations we see a similar occurrence with
Cyworld in South Korea for example.  Cyworld claims 90% of the South
Korean 13 - 21 year old population which translates to just over 13
million registered users.

Cyworld has been purchased by SK Telecom a mobile operator in South
Korea and has expanded into China, Japan and is currently testing in
the US.  Cyworld is the largest music download service in South Korea
dispite the fact that one can only play the music in their virtual
room in Cyworld.

And the more tech savvy crowd are gathering inside World of Warcraft
where cultural mashups and creativity is the most sophisticated.  All
of these sites provide a platform for personalization, personal spaces
along with development of or use of widgets and as they have
evolved...ecommerce has been added.  One might purchase objects from
one Cyworld room to be placed in their own room.  Others might go to
eBay to purchase talismans, weapons or even characters for use in WoW.

So, back to your question.  MySpace hasn't defined a unique market. 
Many more people have access to Internet connectivity than did back in
the Geocities days.  So naturally the numbers will continue to grow. 
Many people like virtual bumper stickers and other objects of
personalization.  As the technology improves and people become more
sophisticated in their use the platforms, those will come and go.  But
there remains the opportunity for to tap into our social and emotional
natures and provide some fun in the process.

...Debi

On 2/24/06, Listera <listera at rcn.com> wrote:
> Debi Jones:
>
> > I think there are many valid points of comparison to Geocities.
>
> Yes, but (management and financial issues aside :-) why did Geocities die?
> I'm interested in the macro reasons here. Other than the explicit music
> angle, is there anything *fundamentally* different in MySpace that wasn't in
> Geocities? Was there a fatal flaw in Geocities that MySpace rectified? Can
> we further speculate that there is and has always been a very large scale
> dormant youth-space market to be exploited by a loosely coupled service that
> got to be fulfilled first by Geocities then and MySpace now and perhaps
> something else in 2008? In other words, is this simply a
> matketslot/mindshare capturing phenomenon of an existing category by MySpace
> or is there a potent formula inherent/exclusive to MySpace that indeed
> created its own market? Like I said, if the numbers are to be believed, I
> still can't get over the 56 MM figure. :-)
>
> ----
> Ziya
>
> "Innovate as a last resort."
>
>
> ------------
> When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.
> *Plain text, please; NO Attachments
>
> Searchable Archive at http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
>
> IA 06 Summit.  Mark your calendar.  March 23-27, Vancouver, BC.  http://www.iasummit.org/
>
>
> ________________________________________
> Sigia-l mailing list -- post to: Sigia-l at asis.org
> Changes to subscription: http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l
>


--
==============================
mojo at mobilejones.com
http://www.mobilejones.com
http://moblogher.typepad.com
WAP site:  winksite.com/mobilejones/mojo
Yahoo! IM: netbeansf
+1 619 894 1073