It seems everywhere I’ve looked today, MySpace has been in the news. First there’s the news (that I missed in December) that MySpace beat out Yahoo! as the most popular website (ranked by pageviews). But then I learn that teenagers are flocking to a other social networking sites such as Xanga, FaceBook, and Bebo. And who can blame them, since a press release published back in October shows that 62.3% of people on MySpace are 25 and older. After all, no teenager wants to hang out at the same site as their parents.
So, what’s a company to do? They’re now the most viewed site online, but they’re losing their market. Oh, and let us not forget the lawsuit that was filed by Families of abused daughters where the parents are seeking millions because… Well… Because… Umm… Oh, yeah, because if the court agrees with the parents then surely they can’t be bad parents, even if they didn’t pay enough attention to their daughters and allowed their daughters to go online unattended. After all it’s MySpace’s job to raise their children, when they’re not being raised by their school teachers that is. But, that’s a soapbox for another day.
So, now MySpace is losing their original target market, but their picking up an older, wealthier market. That’s cool. But they’re being sued for millions. What should they do? How about sue someone else for millions! Harry Maugans says that MySpace is filing or has filed suit against 20+ ad networks for “exploiting the bulletins system in MySpace to send spam to millions of users.” I still haven’t been able to verify who all is being sued or for how much, but the buzz around the sphere is 20+ ad networks with a goal of 20 mil each.
All this fuss over a fairly simple (and poorly design, IMHO) website. Time for another TLA. I hereby announce the usage of MMM to stand for more myspace mess. Go ahead and learn it, you’ll have plenty of chances to type it into you IM windows when you buddies keep you abreast of all the law suits.
Thanks to Stephan Spencer and Denise Wakeman for helping me get caught up on the MySpace news.
