Posts
When I think of MySpace, I remember how my friends and I, when we were Juniors in high school, were as obsessed with it as we are now four years later with Facebook. In 2006, being on MySpace was the cool thing to do. I'm sure that others in the class can relate to my feelings on this. From the time we were all in high school, MySpace was at its peak. Everyone was on it, and we all talked about it during school. This was the time during which, Facebook had its policy of only allowing college students to join its network, and we were locked out of it.
Though Facebook did open up its content to everyone, which MySpace did all along, why has it continuously become less of a dominant presence on the web (at least in popularity)? Today, most of us (younger people) assume that we're only members on Facebook and that MySpace is merely an out of style fad that's embarrassing to bring up.
Though there are many factors that may have contributed to MySpace becoming second to Facebook, one of its most significant ones was its loss of "cool factor" with the younger generation. When MySpace was at its peak, at least for me and I'm sure for others, Facebook was kind of a prize we would win once we went to college. The fact that we couldn't get on immediately before the policy changed had us holding our breath until the moment we could. This I think, had tremendous impact on our age demographic's preference for Facebook. And once we got on, and the more Facebook was intellingent in its manner over the past few years of making it more and more user friendly and entertaining, the more we preferred it to MySpace and the more likely we would emphasize its superiority to other generations, older and younger.
This consequence, of having the most technologically capable generation raving about Facebook above all others has certainly had an impact on our parents' generations and our younger siblings' too in believing that Facebook has the edge over MySpace. And Facebook, perhaps more so than anyone else, has us to thank for that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The sensation that once was Myspace lost all its weight when it became so open to everyone. I remember when Facebook was by invite only and it was a reward for being older and all that. I feel like the nostalgia we have for Myspace also is connected to advantage we have years later in looking at how absurdly out of control it all was. I feel like this is happening now with Facebook. A few years from now we'll look back at how addicted we are became to Facebook and it'll become the new Myspace.
ReplyDeleteMyspace was definitely the perfect example for peer pressure. Probably the only reason i joined was because everyone else was on it, and the same is true for Facebook. As Myspace became older, more and more I kept receiving fake posts that were basically spam, which added to the demise of Myspace at least for me. I am also annoyed at some of the applications that Facebook keeps inventing.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree with you more that Myspace is actually embarrassing to bring up. My friends and I just laugh about it now. Like Dennis and probably the majority of members, I made a Myspace account because everyone else had one. This fact just emphasizes the social aspect of new new media in that it's not only interactive but influenced greatly by society.
ReplyDeleteInteresting view, and I think a good point as well. Overall, I think that Facebook is popular because it is such a safe, middle class environment, whereas MySpace is more of a frontier, and a bit out of control with spam, sex and porn, and commercialism. But MySpace is also much more open to creative expression, whereas Facebook is bland, and comfortable. Overall, on Facebook you generally communicate with people you already know, whereas MySpace and Twitter are much more about communicating with people you don't know offline.
ReplyDelete