IP Democracy: Two Views of MySpace

Anyone interested in “the MySpace phenomenon” might want to take a look at two recent posts that focus on very different aspects of the online social networking service.

Scott Karp, not one to shy away from controversy, calls MySpace “a ticking time bomb.” Scott’s post looks at MySpace from a parent’s point of view and also from a business and advertising perspective. It’s worth a read, as is the discussion (in which he participates) in the comment section that follows it.

Try doing a Google News search for “MySpace murder” or “MySpace sex” and check out all the stories in reputable local media outlets (which have no obvious ax to grind with MySpace)…Still not disturbed? Try spending some time on MySpace. See how long it takes you to find sexually suggestive or explicit content…this is what you get when you remove all social barriers - you get humanity in the raw.

I will say this — my greatest fear of MySpace is as a parent. That’s my personal view, which I won’t try to foist on to anyone else. But as Web 2.0 watcher, I have a strong view from a business perspective, which leads me to this prediction: Rupert Murdoch will come to regret the purchase of MySpace. Why? Because the reality is that MySpace can’t be controlled, and that’s a liability. Yes, I know, Web 2.0 is all about “ceding control” to the “edge.” But MySpace pushes this evolution to the extreme.

Before you respond, let me be repeat - this is NOT a moral critique. It’s a practical, business critique. “Social media” may be all the rage, but “society” functions best somewhere in between anarchy and fascism. Let it drift too far to one extreme, and things can get ugly. And when things get ugly, it’s hard to sell advertising.

Kathy Sierra, at the Creating Passionate Users blog focuses on other aspects of MySpace. She begins by quoting her daughter Skyler, who she describes as “an extremely passionate myspace user.”

According to Skyler “If you’re not on myspace, you don’t exist.” When asked why by Kathy, her response is that “myspace keeps doing what everybody really wants, and it happens instantly…As soon as you think of something, it’s in there…It’s always evolving. It changes constantly. There’s always something new…myspace is like a whole new plane of existence.”

Kathy goes on to recommend the transcript of an ETech presentation by Danah Boyd, a PhD student at UC-Berkeley and a researcher at Yahoo! Research Berkeley, who Kathy says “knows as much about the culture of myspace as anyone, and she has a ton of insight and knowledge about online communities. At a deep level.”

Kathy also discusses the significance of Skyler’s comments about “how myspace keeps changing and growing organically, almost every day,” which she described as “a passionate user’s view of what the developer’s call quick release cycles.”

I wonder if quick release cycles become almost addictive to the end users…we’re so used to thinking of how upset they’ll be when we change things, but clearly this is a different (and frickin’ HUGE) group of users who not only don’t mind the change—they THRIVE on it. Perhaps those quick releases are a little like quick fixes. Code Crack.

Kathy concludes with “So, quick release cycles and a new plane of existence. I have to think about this some more…” Add to the mix Scott’s argument that MySpace is “a ticking time bomb,” and maybe some of his other musings on the transition to Media 2.0 and, yes, there’s plenty to chew on when considering MySpace, online communities and social networking in general, and their relationship to the younger generations of users and creators who will inherit and be increasingly responsible for the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, etc.

Update: Kathy has posted a follow-up that’s also worth reading. In it she suggests that MySpace “developers are figuring out what people want as much (if not more) from watching and anticipating behavior as from taking specific feature requests.”

Jason Fried makes a big point of the fact that they (37signals) are users of their own software, and that they are in as good a position as anyone to recognize what is—and is not—important…The Threadless guys said the same thing—that as developers, being RIGHT smack in the middle of the demographic of their users has really helped them…So there is a huge challenge for developers/authors/teacher like myself who are creating for people who are younger than we are. And the same is true if we are developing for any user group we are not a part of and don’t understand at the cellular level.

Posted by Mitch Shapiro on March 18, 2006 3:46 PM to IP Democracy