MKTG 6525
Research Paper
MySpace’s Success: Social & Cultural Dimensions
By:
Eli Erlikhman
Yuval Roll
Kevin Young
Table of Contents
MARKET POSITION AND CURRENT STRATEGY ASSESSMENT ................................................. 3
HIGH-LEVEL TACTICS & STRATEGY .......................................................................................................... 3
SPECIFIC TACTICS....................................................................................................................................... 4
EXTERNAL ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................. 5
CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH REVENUE MODEL .................................................................................... 5
DIFFICULTIES OF HIGH TECH MARKETING ................................................................................................. 5
SOCIAL NETWORKING & WEB 2.0 ...................................................................................................... 7
SOCIAL & CULTURAL FACTORS AFFECTING MYSPACE SUCCESS ......................................... 7
CULTURAL FACTORS: TAPPING INTO THE NET GENERATION...................................................................... 7
SOCIAL FACTORS: ATTRIBUTES OF MYSPACE AND GLADWELL’S THREE AGENTS OF CHANGE ................. 8
NETWORKING THEORY: HOW MYSPACE SPREAD SO QUICKLY .................................................................. 9
THE MYSPACE MARKET: DEMOGRAPHICS OF ITS USER BASE...............................................10
FUTURE OUTLOOK .................................................................................................................................11
APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................................................13
APPENDIX A: MYSPACE VS GOOGLE ........................................................................................................13
APPENDIX B: TOP 5 SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES TRAFFIC ESTIMATES .............................................14
APPENDIX C - INTERNAL ANALYSIS ..........................................................................................................15
APPENDIX D – PEST ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................16
APPENDIX E – WEB 2.0 COMPANY CHARACTERISTICS ..............................................................................17
2
Market Position and Current Strategy Assessment
MySpace is the most popular social networking website in the US. 1 As of
December 2006, 11.9% of all time spent online by all US internet users was spent on
MySpace.com (pulling ahead of previous leader Yahoo, which now stands at 8.5%) 2
With respect to online properties as a whole, it ranks 6th in terms of its number of unique
visitors, and 7th in terms of the number of average visits per visitor.3
Having launched in late 2003, MySpace (and its parent company, Intermix Media)
was subsequently purchased by News Corp for $580m in late 2005. The purchase was
prompted in part as a response to the growing shift of advertising spending from
traditional media to online.4 With 140M member accounts by the end of 20065 (though
not necessarily representing 140M unique users,) the site is able to draw nearly $25M a
month in ad revenue, with a projected growth rate of 30% per quarter.6
The site had been founded by two former employees of Friendster, an early player
in the social networking category. The founders astutely identified a key deficiency in
the Friendster model that would come to be the cornerstone of MySpace’s product
strategy, and one that is driving product development on an ongoing basis within the
company; namely, MySpace users are able to freely customize their individual profiles’
appearance, and include 3rdparty content & components.7 Given its enormous user base,
MySpace has enabled an ecosystem of supporting services to be built around it. The
services come in the shape of “widgets”, or embeddable content that users can make part
of their respective online profiles. These adjunct services include photo-hosting sites
(such as PhotoBucket and ImageShack), video hosting sites (such as YouTube), and
image slideshow components (such as RockYou and Slide.)8
High-Level Tactics & Strategy
As MySpace grows, it is taking great steps to capitalize upon its huge traffic by (a)
Increasing the breadth of its content offerings/channels, to create a complete online portal
in the vein of Yahoo, and (b) taking direct ownership of the “MySpace Economy” by
developing its own versions of embeddable widgets & content hosting services9,10.
The company’s overall strategy thus seems to be aimed at (a) increasing time
spent on the site by users (thereby keeping the site attractive to advertisers), and (b)
3
diversifying revenue sources beyond advertising alone (by offsetting possible future
widget-monetization by outside parties.)
Specific Tactics
1. Expanding Content Channels
Initially launched with focus around independent bands who can set up pages
through which they can interact with fans (a channel now called MySpace Music),
MySpace continues to create niche community channels with initiatives such as MySpace
Film (portal for independent filmmakers) and MySpace Comedy (comedian-centric portal.)
Further partnership-based enhancements in the content space include MySpace Movies
(showtimes and ability to purchase tickets via MovieTickets.com) and MySpace Jobs
(listing over 5 million jobs through SimplyHired.com)
A foray into the social news market (characterized by user-submitted articles,
voting mechanisms, discussion boards and the like) is also being made in the form of
recently-reported MySpace News.11 Such a service would represent a potential in-house
challenger to massively popular social news sites such as Digg and Reddit.
Anecdotally12, the site also verges on online dating territory.
2. In-House Widget Development
a. MySpace IM – Stand-alone instant-messaging windows software; potential
challenger to major incumbent IM client providers such as MSN, Yahoo, AOL,
and Google.
b. MySpace Video – YouTube challenger13.
c. MySpace Music Player – The music player will allow direct purchase of songs
from the 3M unsigned bands on MySpace.com (with major music label content to
come in the future), in DRM-free MP3 format. The service will be powered by
Snocap (from Naspter founder Shawn Fanning.) 14 The move represents a
potential threat to iTunes.
d. MySpace Slideshows15
3. International Expansion – 12 international sites have been created in addition to the
main global site. The move is meant to counteract the popularity of competing social
4
networks in markets that haven’t been as keen to adopt MySpace (e.g. massive popularity
of Orkut (Google’s social networking service) in Brazil.)
External Analysis
Challenges associated with Revenue model
MySpace is one of the most popular websites online with more page views that
Google (See Appendix A.) However, MySpace revenues significantly lack those of
Google. In 2006 Google had total revenues of $10.6 billion, while MySpace is estimated
to make only approximately $200 million in revenues, primarily by selling advertising
space.
Until a recent deal with Google, MySpace had no way to monetize search traffic.
As such, MySpace’s main challenge is to find a better way to monetize its large customer
base and to increase revenues. Total 2006 revenues generated by social networking
websites including MySpace were estimated at $280 million, which represents only 1.7%
of the U.S. online advertising market16.
The relatively low advertising revenue gross can be attributed to the
comparatively low ad rates charged by social networking websites. It is estimated that
MySpace sells 1 million ad impressions for $117. In order for the company to increase
the price of its ad space, it would need to find a way to target its users more efficiently,
and in doing so make its advertising properties more attractive to existing and prospective
advertisers.
Difficulties of High Tech Marketing
1. Hyper-Competition
As the social networking category becomes more and more popular, a large number of
competitors are entering this field (See Appendix B for comparative traffic data of the top
5 competitors.) The number is ever-increasing, for several different reasons.
Firstly, it is technically very easy to create a new social networking website.
Secondly, there are many different niche markets that social networking websites can
target. Thirdly, end-user switching costs are low, given the low investment of time and
money (free) required to create a profile on competing social networking services.
5
According to some analysts, "social networking sites are relatively easy to build. If users
keep their profiles updated - churn and dormancy are always an issue - then MySpace
will remain critical to people's social lives. If not, the site may possibly only last a few
years."18
As new technologies begin to emerge to easily allow for the transfer of one’s profile
from one social website to another, customer turnover will become a greater concern for
MySpace and social networking sites. While this poses a potential competitive threat, it
also presents an opportunity to gain customers from other social websites. MySpace
could capitalize on this prospect by opening up an API that would allow outside
developers to build profile-migration applications out of smaller social networking
websites and into its own.
2. Dynamic/Fickle/Ultra-demanding Customers
Users of social networking websites have many expectations about the service they
get. Firstly, they expect the service to be free. Secondly, they want to have control of
customizing and personalizing their profile pages, from the standpoint of visual layout
and inclusion of multimedia content.
Customers’ demands in this regard have sprung a large number of websites (such as
www.pimp-my-profile.com) that provide their visitors with free tools and layouts for
customizing their profiles on different social networking websites; there are over 10,000
free layouts for MySpace alone.
As such, it appears that any large-scale social networking website needs to provide its
users with an ability to develop a unique layout and profile in order to sustain their
interest in its services.
3. Incomplete User Information/Partial Knowledge
MySpace and other social networking websites don’t have complete knowledge about
their customer base. It is very easy for people to misrepresent information about
themselves when signing up for a social networking website. Thus it is very difficult for
MySpace to know exact demographic information (e.g. age, location, etc.) about its users.
6
Social Networking & Web 2.0
“Social Networking” is a sub-classification of a type of website that falls under
the more general Web 2.0 classification. It is characterized by communities that share
and meta-tag resources among a group of people. “Social” applications & features
include photo-sharing, blogging, podcasting, and reputation-enabled systems. 19 The
strength of a social network is directly proportional to the number of community-
members it can attract, which is typical of Web 2.0 company characteristics (see
Appendix E.)
Social & Cultural Factors Affecting MySpace Success
Cultural Factors: Tapping into the Net Generation
Like many popular technology-based products and services that achieve
mainstream market penetration, MySpace’s initial growth was driven by users in their
teens and twenties. Launched in 2003, initially as a site for twenty-somethings to
discover the Los Angeles indie music scene, MySpace quickly lowered the minimum age
to fourteen.20 The product was an immediate fit with a segment of the population that
demographers call the “baby-boom echo” or as Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics,
refers to as the “Net Generation” (Net Gen). The Net Gen includes a generation of
people born between 1977 and 1996, internationally accounting for over two billion
people21. What immediately distinguishes this demographic from previous generations is
a heightened understanding of technology; as Tapscott point out, this is the first time in
history where a generation of kids became experts before their parents. More importantly,
they are marked by a degree of confidence, skepticism and participation that, enabled by
technology applications such as MySpace, entails a higher level of interaction with one
another and the world around them. Rather than being passive recipients of mass
consumer culture, the Net Gen spend time searching, reading, scrutinizing, authenticating,
collaborating and organizing with one another22. For the Net Gen, the Web is more than
just a repository of information or a place to go shopping, it is a dynamic forum for
sharing and interacting with one another. As Tapscott, puts it, “the Net Gen is the
7
generation that will inject the culture of openness, participation and interactivity into
workplaces, markets and communities.”
MySpace simply provided the Net Gen with a platform for self-expression while
enabling them to build a network of their peers. As Danah Boyd, a University of
Berkeley-based social scientist, argues, online applications such as MySpace and
YouTube offer a new and private venue for interacting with one another. “Adults control
the home, the school, and most activity spaces…teens are told where to be, what to do
and how to do it. They lack control at home, and many teens don’t see home as their
private space.” 23 Thus, the new private spaces are increasingly found online, where
young people can gather en masse and where they are increasingly free to manage their
interactions, form networks and shape their own identities. Though many of the
relationships are shallow, Boyd argues that the process plays an important role in how
teens learn the rules of social life and cope with issues such as status, respect, gossip and
trust.
Social Factors: Attributes of MySpace and Gladwell’s Three
Agents of Change
In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell attempts to explain the
phenomenon of how select products can pervade market environments at an epidemic
pace using the following three rules: the law of the few, stickiness factor and the power
of context24.
The law of the few is based on the assertion that social networks are usually
controlled by only a handful of well-connected people, including Connectors, Mavens
and Salesmen. Connectors as those individuals that stand at the hub of wider
interpersonal networks – in the case of MySpace, Connectors would represent those users
with the widest network of friends and therefore those capable of spreading the
application to more people. Mavens refer to knowledgeable people capable of influence.
When MySpace was initially launched, it benefited from thousands of Mavens
expounding the benefits of MySpace over other predecessors such as Friendster on online
forums such as blogs and chat groups. Salesmen represent those charismatic individuals
capable of influence via role modeling; when MySpace was first launched within the
8
music community, hundreds of indie-rock bands (and subsequently more commercially
popular musicians and entertainers) helped to draw tens of thousands of fans.
Gladwell’s second law, the stickiness factor, refers to those aspects of a product,
idea or social trend that makes it memorable in the minds of consumers. In the case of
MySpace, which had its greatest early success with teenagers looking to share pictures
and communicate with friends, it offered a higher degree of personalization than its
competitors. MySpace listened to user feedback and quickly iterated the product with
rapid development cycles. MySpace added blogs, comment boards, message boards, IM,
long before competitors like Friendster were able to upgrade their product. When users
began to hack their MySpace pages to embed more photos and graphics from places like
PhotoBucket, MySpace did not discourage this behavior. This enabled users to add
photos and graphics images into their friends comment boards25. Every user’s “space”
represented something different and unique to their identity, thereby creating a fun and
addictive experience in browsing the spaces of others. Continued upgrades and added
capabilities helped to ensure that users returned to update their own profiles and to view
the updates of others.
The power of context refers to subtle changes in the environment that can have a
major impact on consumer behavior. Specific to MySpace, this rule also highlights the
power that groups of people play in spreading a social epidemic. As an environment
where new beliefs are practiced and ideas shared, groups play a significant role in
changing consumer behavior, often through peer pressure and social norms. A deeper
analysis of how MySpace leveraged the power of groups to grow its user base is included
in the following section.
Networking Theory: How MySpace Spread so Quickly
How did MySpace grow, in the span of just a few years, to account for over one
hundred million users? Cognitive psychology dictates that there is a fixed amount of
space in our brain for certain kinds of information, a concept referred to as channel
capacity. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar took this theory one step further by quantifying
the social channel capacity of human beings based on the relative size of the neocortex
within the human brain. The result was the Rule of 150, which states that human beings
9
can only conduct a maximum of 150 “genuine” social relationships26. Marketers and
sociologists alike are very interested in this number because it provides a cap on the size
of a group or organization of people through which a message, product or service can
efficiently be transmitted – i.e. part of the reason MySpace spread so quickly was that it
was transmitted through a series of smaller, self-organizing groups of people. Simply put,
a product or service will travel at a faster viral pace if passed along through groups of
people rather than individuals. For MySpace, this effect was amplified because those
groups were self-selected; the members of each sub-group were a part of one another’s
most important social group – their own friends.
Research has further proven that there is a high level of connectivity between
different social networks, however remote that individuals may seem from one another.
The Small World Phenomena (commonly referred to as “Six Degrees of Separation”,)
explored by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, states that everyone in the world can
connect to anyone else in six steps or less 27 . Nowhere is this more prevalent than
MySpace; users perusing one another’s networks can connect over great distances
through a series of simple clicks. As Milgram’s study proved, the problem isn’t
connectivity but rather the individuals’ ability to navigate it; most people simply don’t
make effective use of their personal contacts. While MySpace is considered a
commercial product or service, it is also an easy-to-use networking tool. It is a sticky
product with its own mechanism for transmission – the product is the network. In this
way, MySpace is subject to the same network effects of eBay or YouTube; its credibility
and value proposition increases as more users join because the users are producing the
content of value.
The MySpace Market: Demographics of its User Base
While MySpace may have started out as a social networking site for teenagers and
indie rock fans, the site has become increasingly popular among older Internet users.
Between 2005 and 2006, the portion of MySpace’s total user base between the ages of
12-17 dropped from 24.7% to 11.9%, with users between the ages of 35-54 accounting
for a dominant 40.6% of total visitors28. In part, this is not surprising; as MySpace grew
increasingly mainstream, the composition of its user base has progressively come to
10
mirror the composition of Internet users as a whole. Effectively catering to so many
different segments can also be considered a commentary on just how customizable and
robust the site’s capabilities are. MySpace, with a wide range of applications available,
and multiple, self-forming sub-groups, allows users to segment themselves. Still, the
question remains, as an increasing number of social networking sites that are anchored in
more niche interest areas continue to surface, will MySpace be able sustain its broad
mainstream appeal?
Future Outlook
MySpace has established itself as the leading social network site on the Internet,
not because it was the first, but because it was the easiest to use, offering a higher degree
of customization and allowing its user base the flexibility of working with any number of
third party applications. In today’s online economy consumer attention is the scarce
resource. With MySpace’s unparalleled user base and a “stickiness” that keeps its
members on-site longer, the site has already secured its most coveted and precious asset.
Despite over 90 million visitors each month29, however, MySpace’s revenue model has
lacked the leverage of other online players such as Yahoo and Google, who are capable
of generating higher profits with lower levels of online traffic. The challenge MySpace
now faces is how best to commercially capitalize on its tremendous success. In August
2006, the company signed a $900 million deal to provide a Google search facility and
advertising on MySpace30. Using Google’s contextually-based advertising engine will
certainly help drive revenues, while leveraging Google’s search capabilities will support
MySpace as it seeks to establish itself as a web portal for broader use. But it would
appear that Google is the only major online player against whom MySpace isn’t
competing; its strategy to keep consumers online longer by producing its own widgets
will bring the site in head-on competition against well-established services such as
YouTube and MSN Messenger. The corollary of MySpace’s “all in one” portal strategy
is a trade-off in flexibility of the user’s experience. One of the site’s key advantages over
other initial competitors such as Friendster was its decision to allow users to work with
third party content and application providers. Now, MySpace’s user base in under attack
from third-party widgets that offer their own advertising or e-commerce services built in,
11
and from smaller niche sites looking to redirect traffic to their own content. MySpace has
responded by removing embedded widgets that violate their terms of service. The
backlash from the user community was immediate and my have long term consequences.
As Tila Tequila, a singer who is one of MySpace’s most visible users (a former-
“Salesman”, to use Gladwell’s nomenclature), railed on her personal blog, “You guys
used to be so cool… don’t turn into a corporate evil monster.”31
How does MySpace reconcile the need to protect its advertising revenues with the
consumer’s need for flexibility? Simply put, the company must choose its battles very
carefully. As Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist focused on social media
companies, states, “you have to accept the fact that you are never going to be the be-all
and end-all of everyone’s experience. They are one click away from everyone else on the
Web.” 32 The barriers to entry in this emerging space of social networking are low.
Upstart rivals with a more focused approach, such as MySpace (targeting the college
crowd) or Linked In (anchored in professional networking and job-hunting) are already
encroaching on MySpace’s ever-expanding territory. MySpace risks alienating its user
with too proprietary an approach, and it is conceivable that a rival site could emerge
(certainly, it’s faster to build capability by taking an open and cooperative approach to
supporting service than MySpace’s current in-house pursuits). With a rapid pace of
innovation, MySpace cannot expect to replicate every new widget developed. It should
be expected that MySpace’s ever-widening network will continue to include third party
partners, both formal and informal. For that matter, a certain amount of “revenue
leakage” may need to be factored into the site’s business model in order to maintain
flexibility; MySpace’s policing initiatives should be focused only on significant offenders,
with such action weighed carefully against the negative effects it might have to the user
experience and the site’s reputation. Finally, it is further recommended that MySpace
open-up the APIs to some of its more popular widgets. By encouraging participative
consumption from its user community, it can further the development of select
applications while securing a higher level of loyalty from its “prosumers”. Ultimately,
MySpace will need to temper its commercial goals of leveraging its tremendous user base
by maintaining the foundation of its success; that is, the promotion of those values core to
the Net Gen, encouraging individuality, openness, collaboration and freedom.
12
Appendix
Appendix A: MySpace vs Google
Source: www.alexa.com
13
Appendix B: Top 5 Social Networking Websites Traffic
Estimates
Source: www.alexa.com
14
Appendix C - Internal Analysis
Product:
MySpace’s primary function is to provide its users with an easy and convenient way
to create an online profile & establish online affiliations with a wide circle of both
close and extended friends. The online profile allows users to share information
through blogs and multimedia, list their friends, get comments from visitors and
customize their profile beyond basics provided by MySpace. These features are
similar to what MySpace’s competitors offer. MySpace allows its users to interact
through a variety of means such as bulletins, groups, MySpace IM and MySpace
mobile. The last two features are some of latest key product features that differentiate
MySpace versus its competitors. Overall, MySpace has a slight competitive
advantage in its product offering relative to its main competitors.
Many of MySpace’s competitors are looking at opening up their APIs this year to
third party developers, while MySpace has declined to comment.33 Social
Networking websites are reaching the stage of maturity. Opening up APIs to
developers would spurt a new stage of innovation for social networking websites. If
MySpace does not open its API to developers it would have a serious competitive
product disadvantage against websites such as Orkut and Facebook.
Price:
MySpace offers its services to its users for free. It has two sources of revenues:
selling advertising space on its website and monetizing search traffic through a recent
deal with Google.
The pricing structure is in line with its main competitors who have a broad customer
base. However, some of the niche social networking websites charge subscription
fees to their premium members.
Promotion/Place:
The primary promotion strategy at present is through word of mouth and leveraging
its users’ online and offline social ties. The emphasis is on MySpace users to invite
their friends to join the MySpace network.
15
Appendix D – PEST Analysis
Political
Spam Engine? In September 2006, an article was published ("MySpace: The
Business of Spam 2.0") alleging that what was now regarded as a social
networking website had been originally designed as a span delivery system
Protecting Musicians’ IP Rights: Until June 2006, there was a concern amongst
musicians, artists, and bands on MySpace such as songwriter Billy Bragg owing
to the fine print within the user agreement that read, "You hereby grant to
MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license
(with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy,
modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce,
transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services". Jeff Berman, a
MySpace spokesman swiftly responded by saying, "Because the legalese has
caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that
MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist's work other than
allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends".
Legislation Blocking MySpace: On July 28, 2006, the United States House of
Representatives passed a controversial bill requiring libraries and schools
receiving certain types of federal funding (E-rate) to prevent unsupervised minors
from using chat rooms and social networking websites, such as MySpace. This
bill, known as the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA), was approved
by a 410-15 vote in the United States House of Representatives but was not
brought to a vote in the United States Senate.
Economical
News Corp’s Acquisition of MySpace: In October 2006, Brad Greenspan,
former Chairman and CEO of Intermix Media published "The MySpace Report"
that called for the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate News
Corp’s acquisition of MySpace with the allegation that NewsCorp undervalued
MySpace and had, in effect, defrauded Intermix shareholders through an unfair
deal process
MySpace Business Model: On August 8, 2006, search engine Google signed a
$900 million deal to provide a Google search facility and advertising on MySpace
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5254642.stm)
Social
Child Safety: MySpace has been recently linked to a number of news reports
stating that teenagers have found ways around the restrictions set by MySpace
(users must be over the age of 14 to set up an account), and have been the target
of online predators (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11165576/). In Feb 2007, a
16
U.S. District Judge in Texas dismissed a case where a family sued MySpace for
negligence, fraud and misrepresentation; a girl in the family had been sexually
assaulted by a men she met through MySpace, after she had misrepresented her
age as 18 when she was 13 (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/02/15/BUGEKO4VU01.DTL&type=
business)
Personalization/self expression: There are several independent web sites
offering MySpace layout design utilities which let a user select options and
preview what their page will look like with them. Including third party web sites,
MySpace offers the widest degree of customization, users treating their accounts
as opportunities for self-expression
Technological
Security Concerns: In October 2005, a flaw in the MySpace's site design was
exploited by a user only known as "Samy" to create the world's first self-
propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. MSNBC has also reported that
MySpace is a "hotbed" for spyware, and that infection rates are rising because of
MySpace.[24] In addition to this, the customization of user pages currently allows
the injection of certain HTML which can be crafted to form a phishing user
profile (phishing involves the acquisition of sensitive personal information, such
as credit card numbers, through fraudulent means)
Success of Competing Technologies: According to Alexa Internet, YouTube is
outgrowing MySpace’s reach. MySpace initially banned embedded YouTube
videos from its user profiles but was forced to lift the band after it was widely
protested (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5254642.stm). In a September 2006
investor meeting, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin claimed that virtually all
modern Web applications (naming YouTube, Flickr, and Photobucket) were
really just "driven off the back of MySpace" and that "we ought to be able to
match them if not exceed them"
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/12/myspace-we-dont-need-web-20/)
Appendix E – Web 2.0 Company Characteristics34
1. Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
2. Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more
people use them
3. Trusting users as co-developers
4. Harnessing collective intelligence
5. Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
6. Software above the level of a single device
7. Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models
17
1
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=906
Accessed March 24, 2007
2
Top-20 Websites: Where DO we spend our time online?
http://blog.compete.com/2007/01/25/top-20-websites-ranked-by-time-spent/
Accessed March 12, 200\7
3
http://mashable.com/2007/03/14/myspace-yahoo-comscore/
Accessed March 14, 2007
4
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4695495.stm
Accessed March 12, 2007
5
http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=198614,00.asp
Accessed March 12, 2007
6
http://mashable.com/2007/02/09/myspace-makes-25-million-a-month-in-ads/
Accessed March 12, 2007
7
http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=198614,00.asp
Accessed March 12, 2007
8
http://mashable.com/2006/04/19/feeding-the-myspace-beast/
Accessed March 12, 2007
9
Pete Cashmore “Exclusive: MySpace Testing their Own Widget Platform”
Mashable.com, Sept 14, 2006
http://mashable.com/2006/09/14/thespringbox-newscorp-developing-myspace-widgets/
Accessed March 24, 2007
10
Brad Stone “MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users”
The New York Times, Mar 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/technology/20myspace.html?ei=5088&en=8e52c7903cb71959&ex=1
332043200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1174404577-zBkSE0PCSGT7LE1NxjqR/g
Accessed March 24, 2007
11
http://www.thepomoblog.com/archive/news-as-a-social-play-here-comes-myspace-news/
Accessed March 12, 2007
12
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/myspace_the_alm.php
Accessed March 12, 2007
13
Peter Cashmore “MySpace: We’ll Crush YouTube”
Mashable.com, Sept 12, 2006
http://mashable.com/2006/09/12/myspace-well-crush-youtube/
Accessed March 12, 2007
14
http://mashable.com/2006/09/01/breaking-myspace-to-sell-music-from-3-million-bands/
Accessed March 12, 2007
15
Pete Cashmore “MySpace Launches MySpace Slideshows”
Mashable.com, Aug 5, 2006
http://mashable.com/2006/08/05/myspace-launches-myspace-slideshows/
Accessed March 12, 2007
16
YouTube, Digg, MySpace: How much is a non-paying user worth?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=283
Accessed March 24, 200\7
17
Mining for Gold on MySpace
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2006/tc20060616_682547.htm
Accessed March 24, 2007
18
MySpace searches for revenues
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1781458,00.html
Accessed March 24, 2007
19
Kurt Cagle “A Web 2.0 Checklist”
Feb 22, 2006
http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/02/a_web_20_checklist.html
Accessed March 24, 2007
20
Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, 2006.
18
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid.
24
Moore, Geoffrey A., “Crossing the Chasm”, HarperPerennial, 1991.
25
http://www.startup-review.com/blog/myspace-case-study-not-a-purely-viral-start.php
26
http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/05/65/bbs00000565-00/bbs.dunbar.html
27
http://smallworld.sociology.columbia.edu/
28
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1019
29
Brad Stone “MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users”
The New York Times, Mar 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/technology/20myspace.html?ei=5088&en=8e52c7903cb71959&ex=1
332043200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1174404577-zBkSE0PCSGT7LE1NxjqR/g
Accessed March 24,
30
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5254642.stm
31
Brad Stone “MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users”
The New York Times, Mar 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/technology/20myspace.html?ei=5088&en=8e52c7903cb71959&ex=1
332043200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1174404577-zBkSE0PCSGT7LE1NxjqR/g
Accessed March 24,
32
Ibid.
33
Social Networking Sites Open Up
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2007/tc20070213_172619.htm
Accessed March 24, 2007
34
Tim O’reilly “What is Web 2.0”
Sept 30, 2005
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=5
Accessed March 17, 2007
19