Ziff-Davis’ Baseline recently published an insider’s look at how MySpace functions on a technical level, and it’s quite revealing.
The common assumption among programming types about MySpace is that the system started off as somebody’s pet project and quickly mushroomed beyond the programmers’ control. Rather than cooling off growth to create a better infrastructure, the MySpace folks opted for growth at any costs. As a result, we end up with the buggy, unreliable usability nightmare that is MySpace today. Now, it’s assumed, the programmers and sysadmins are scrambling to play catchup.
This article pretty much confirms these assumptions. According to the article, MySpace started out as a ColdFusion-based project — and while ColdFusion is ridiculously easy to program, any developer can tell you it’s got a reputation (deserved or not) for being a little slow and resource-heavy on the performance scale. So as they’ve grown, MySpace has been moving to Microsoft’s ASP.Net and relying on emulators to port some of the older code over.
One can’t really blame MySpace for such logic. It’s the kind of hot-air logic that propelled companies like Pets.com to the stratosphere back in the ’90s and made a ton of people oodles and oodles of cash. It’s Web 1.0 thinking. Using such Web 1.0 thinking, MySpace has quickly vaulted to become the most visited site on the Internet and gotten snatched up by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. in the process.
But as a result, they’ve built on an unsustainable foundation. They’ve made the classic gamble that short-term gain will trump long-term stability. And like so many Web 1.0 companies that came before them, MySpace is headed for a big, clumsy fall. Here’s why.
- Easy come, easy go. The base audience for MySpace consists of teenagers and folks in their twenties. That’s not to say this is the only demographic using MySpace, but that’s the core audience. These people flocked to the service for the same reasons young people flock to anything: it was new, it was cool, it was free, and everyone they knew was doing it. Give them an alternative that’s newer, cooler, better functioning, and more reliable — not to mention backed by big corporate dollars — and they’ll flock there just as quickly.
- Insecurity. Recently someone came up with the grand idea of distributing malicious code through a security vulnerability in embedded QuickTime videos. Folks have been taking advantage of CSS and HTML quirks to hack MySpace almost since the place began. More and more people are complaining about hacked profiles and hijacked identities. MySpace has demonstrated time and again that they’re behind the curve when it comes to security. So I think it’s highly likely that at some point in the near future, we’ll see a series of successful crippling attacks on MySpace that will send people running in a panicky exodus.
- Slowing pace of innovation. Adapt or die, that’s the unofficial motto of the Internet. And unlike, say, Google, which continues to pump out features and applications by the gallon, MySpace has remained largely sedentary for the past year. They released a lamentable, old-school IM client and better video integration, but otherwise the system is pretty much the same as it was 18 months ago. As MySpace’s technical problems grow and their folks spend more and more time just keeping up with demand, they’re going to fall even further behind.
- Facebook. If you want to see an example of a MySpace-like program that actually works, look no further than Facebook. It’s user-friendly, it’s popular, and best of all, it’s reliable. The service’s big handicap at this point is that it doesn’t allow nearly the level of customization that MySpace does. But that’s only one major partnership with Yahoo! away (assuming Yahoo! finally bites the bullet and makes a deal with them already).
- Where are the premium services? I’m not entirely familiar with the intricacies of MySpace’s business model, but from the looks of things, they’re entirely dependent on advertising. And as Yahoo! has discovered, that’s not a stable strategy for the long term. Why hasn’t MySpace tapped into the burgeoning third-party market of MySpace website pimpers and added services like that of their own? Where are the premium clubs and the premium band promotion services?
- “Why change?” attitude. A former MySpace VP of operations is quoted in the article as saying: “when you look at the result, it’s hard to argue that what we did with the interface and navigation was bad. And why change it, when you have success?” Few technology companies have succeeded in the long run with the mantra “why change?” It won’t fly on the Internet, where the barriers to migrating to another free service are absolutely nil.
So there you have a few reasons off the top of my head why I think MySpace is headed for a fall. This doesn’t mean that they’ll disappear entirely. After all, Compuserve is still around, and America Online will probably hang on for awhile too even after they’ve recklessly thrown away their customers. But neither are any more than a shell of their former selves, and I suspect that MySpace will eventually meet that fate too.
Is it inevitable? Well, every Goliath falls eventually. That’s just the nature of the universe. But it’s up to MySpace just how far away and how graceful that fall is.
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(Related reading: see my previous rants on Why Does MySpace Suck So Badly? and MySpace Spam or Clever Marketing?)