MySpace Aims for a Global Audience, and Finds Some Stiff Competition – New York Times
This article has grown a bit stale, but I couldn’t let it pass by. The trouble that MySpace faces in expanding worldwide shows that for a social network website to be successful, it must have both a good design and win in terms of network effects.
I am a MySpace user, and to editorialize for a moment, I think that its design stinks.
While many (myself included) gripe about the poorly thought out interface, one thing that many hold out as MySpace’s primary strength is how it lets every user customize their own page. Unfortunately, this is done entirely through css editing, which is onerous to both the casual user who isn’t familiar with programming and the css coder who is used to standard markup (here are two great examples of improving both MySpace’s home page and the profile page).
I would argue that MySpace got where it is today by benefit of network effects. Much like the telephone, which wasn’t completely useful until everyone got one, the value in MySpace comes from all of your friends having a page. In some ways, it’s like an online party where everyone is invited–if all of your friends are there, it’s only natural to try it out.
However, in the global marketplace there are existing social networking sites (like Cyworld) which already have an established user-base. If MySpace doesn’t have some compelling design or feature to draw these users to their product (even to be used concurrently with another), there’s little chance that it will catch on. Unfortunately, I’ve read elsewhere that MySpace is reluctant to engage in any common standards which would allow social networking sites to communicate with each other. My guess is this their realization of the importance of network effects and the problems of bad design.