The Death of MySpace

                                                                                  

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FIREND TOM?

In 2006 MySpace became the most popular networking site on the web and dominated all others. Pretty soon everyone was unloading pictures, videos, creating their very own slide shows, page designs, music playlists and had a friend named Tom.

There was a time when I could not be on a computer and not check and update my MySpace. I would spend hours finding the right page layout, color scheme and background image for my page. Then I would move on to creating a new slide show since I had took a bunch of the new pictures since the last slide show. Finally I wouldn’t be able to log off without knowing that I updated my playlist and that its not going through the same played out songs. Of course all of this would take place after the routine checking of messages, comments and friend requests.

Even presidential candidates had a MySpace, it was the fastest way to connect to the younger generation. This however is one thing that lead to its downfall. When creating a website you expect to last, the bigger the intended audience the better. When MySpace came about it was obvious that it was designed with teens in mind. Everything about the website spoke to the younger generation, which is what lead to strike two against MySpace: continuing report of online stalking. If someone wanted to find a young teenage girl what better place to look than a website where the young girls poured out all their personal information without a second thought of safety. News reports centered around MySpace were appearing more and more everyday. Though they worked with authorities to catch these predators, their network was already developing a bad name especially with parents.

Throughout the years MySpace has tried to keep there users but there numbers are still plummeting. They have had to cut their employee size down to about 1000. Their biggest competitor Facebook has stolen their users like a thief in the night. It is becoming quite obvious after examining some of MySpace’s newest updates. From status updates to the new color scheme and even the addition of applications it is clear which network MySpace is currently trying to keep up with. This Network is slowly sinking and everyone is abandoning ship. Now the phrase is: Who uses MySpace anymore??

My Theme

My Theme

I remember transitioning from very first walkman, to my first CD player, to my first anti skip CD player, to a 512mb MP3 player, MP4, iPod Shuffle, and currently iTouch all in such a short period of time.

This semester I wanted to Blog about something that I could maintain and that I will find interesting enough to constantly want write more. What better than something that’s always changing? Which is why I chose to write about Trends and the effect they have on our society. It seems like everyday there is a new "must have", a new word, or something i am pretty sure wasn’t there last month.

A trend can be seen as a tendency, fad or a style that is instantly followed by a large population and just as quickly disappears.  Meaning something can be totally cool one day and the next its "dude you still use that?' For instance MySpace and its tragic end (to be discussed later). It doesn’t take very long for a trend to disappear. For some its time has come and past because of over use, others its just the fact that some thing bigger and better came along (maybe even smaller). This doesn’t mean that it is extinct forever, because sometimes that is not the case. Some trends find a way to make there way back around a second maybe even third time. In my blog I will be elaborating on these and so much more. Trends appear and disappear everywhere so there are many different types of trends that I will be looking into.