I've Heard This Story Before

Six years ago MySpace was bought for $580 million. Yesterday it was sold by that same company for $35 million, or about 6% of what they paid for it. (I assume whomever authorized that transaction is long since gone.) This drop in value really shouldn't be a surprise because I don't know anyone who actually uses MySpace anymore; most pages were abandoned long ago. Frankly, I'm amazed the site was still worth that much money. The only people who update their sites are bands who are not famous enough to have a site with their own domain name. (Which is actually why one of the new investors, Justin Timberlake, makes a tremendous amount of sense. Someone with a music background might be able to provide good insight into how bands could use MySpace going forward, which is what I assume the focus of the site will be from here on out.)

Anyway, the reason this story really registered with me is because I remembered back to 2006 when everyone was telling me I had to get a MySpace page. It was going to revolutionize how we interacted with other people, they said. Well, I signed up and do you know what happened? Nothing particularly interesting. It was just another place to look at people's pictures. It certainly wasn't a revolution. Not surprisingly, I deleted my page less than a year later when I started this blog and found I could be a lot more creative. I just saw MySpace as another fad that had gone the way of slap bracelets, Starter jackets and Power Rangers. [Sidebar: admittedly, that's just me. Simon and Liz may have different feelings on the matter.]

This news also reminded me that trends on the Internet burn out faster than normal fads because more people can check something out and then get sick of it much faster than we can in the real world. The latest thing gets consumed and discarded much more rapidly than some product in real life. Plus, since most of these sites are free people don't feel any type of brand loyalty or need to stick around until they've gotten their money's worth. As soon as something better comes along, they take off for whatever is seen as newer, faster or cooler. Also, it helps if you actually have a product to sell. When you're entire business model is based on people coming back and doing all the work it's a good chance you won't be around for the long haul.

All of which makes people's insistence that Facebook is somehow immune to this all the more strange. I saw all these pundits on TV saying that Facebook was never going to fall victim to this same kind of thing. Would they like to check with the guy who created Friendster? How about the guy who made Napster? Nothing is immune to people getting tired of it. You would think that people would recognize this, but they don't. Hell, just this afternoon I saw one of the former members on N*Sync doing an extremely ghetto commercial for a fireworks store. Think he saw that coming in 2000? Someday in the future we'll hear about Facebook getting sold for pennies on the dollar and think back to when people insisted it was going to be the only website we'd ever need. I'm sure it will be big news on whatever social media site is the fad of the moment. Just make sure you don't buy stock in whatever it is.