What ever happened to Myspace

Is it just me that remembers that there used to be some pretty popular social networking sites called Myspace and Bebo?


Jogged some memories has it? Myspace is widely credited with starting the whole social network revolution, possibly not the case as i can distinctly remember that before Myspace came along me and my friends were making simple websites using free domain hosting sites which is arguably the same thing. However Myspace is definitely what brought the idea to the main stream and laid the foundations and structure for modern social networking.
So if Myspace was so good and innovative what happened to it?

Myspace may have started the generation, the problem was it did not keep up. Suddenly hundreds of social networks were popping up here there and everywhere all offering a different angle.

Blogs offering the ability to share opinions, Micro blogs allowing you to update people on what is happening, flickr and YouTube allowing people to share photos and videos as well as countless social networks for different social groups and interests.

Although all these things were sprouting up here there and everywhere but Myspace was still on top!

Then along came Facebook, and everything changed. Facebook took the best ideas from Myspace and its other competitors and converged them together to make a social network accessible to all. complete with blogs, updates, pictures, videos and special interest groups.
Nothing ground breaking i know when you look back at it, so why is it so successful?
It's simple it has constantly adapted and evolved adding games, new groups, news and music. Finding what is being made successful everywhere else.
It also has been saved by its ability to be flexible, the biggest competitor for Facebook's crown has undoubtedly been twitter, so how has it not dethroned Facebook like Myspace before it. The answer to that is it has embraced twitter, getting its own twitter account allowing twitter feeds to be linked to your Facebook and your blog entries, links, news and events.

So if we established what causes "staying power" in the social network domain it is undoubtedly flexibility.
With that in mind what is the future for social networking? Well the answer is it has already progressed.

With the appearance of sites such as linkedin . a Professional social network, mixing the social network concept with Job sites. In a current economic climate where everybody is worried where there next job is coming from it is the perfect time to work on relationships and networking within your chosen profession.

I feel this trend will continue into the future and as long as social networks are happy to adapt to audience pull and market push