Facebook Didn't Kill MySpace. MySpace Did

The story

In July 2006, for one week, MySpace was the most visited website in America by one research firm's count, ahead of Google and Yahoo. News Corp had bought it a year earlier for $580 million. In 2011, it sold MySpace for about $35 million.

The usual story is that Facebook killed it. But MySpace was already hurting itself: a $900 million ad deal with traffic targets, twice as many ads, a product its own co-founder says lacked focus, and a rival that let others build on its platform. This is the rise and ruin of the social network that taught a generation how to live online.

Three lessons

1. 1

   Don't sell out your users to pay for growth. When ads and targets come first, the product gets worse, and people notice.

2. 2

   Focus beats features. MySpace tried to build everything. Facebook did a few things well, and let others build the rest.

3. 3

   Your users won't wait for you. MySpace's fans left one friend at a time, and by the time it was obvious, it was too late.

Chapters

1. 0:00Intro
2. 0:41A friend named Tom
3. 1:23The biggest site in America
4. 2:04The $900 million deal
5. 2:44A junk heap
6. 3:37The crossing
7. 4:15Thirty five million
8. 4:47The lost songs
9. 5:21Three lessons

Sources

Every fact in this file is checked against published sources before release. See our standards.

• TechCrunch (July 2006), MySpace hit #1 US destination last week, Hitwise
• Rochester Business Journal (AP, July 2005), News Corp. to buy MySpace.com owner for $580 million
• Britannica, Tom Anderson (MySpace founding, eUniverse)
• Deseret News (AP, Aug 2006), Google, MySpace sign $900 million deal
• HuffPost (2011), How MySpace fell apart (DeWolfe, Gold and Parker quotes, user losses, layoffs)
• Washington Post (June 2008), Facebook passes MySpace with global boost (comScore, May 2008)
• PCWorld (June 2009), Facebook overtakes MySpace in U.S. (comScore, May 2009)
• TechCrunch (Apr 2009), MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe steps down
• NPR (June 2011), News Corp. sells MySpace for $35 million
• TechCrunch (Oct 2011), Murdoch on MySpace: "I made a huge mistake"
• NPR (Mar 2019), MySpace says it lost years of user-uploaded music