Several articles have come out refuting the death of MySpace as researchers try to make sense of the continued persistence of what many people consider last-year’s news. Here is an interesting article by Misiek Piskorski from Harvard Business Review answering the question “Where are all those My Space Users”?
“Both traditional and social media have declared MySpace dead. Even a brief scan of articles reveals that media mavens “don’t know anybody who uses MySpace anymore,” which reportedly is not a huge loss as the site “is ridden by spammers” and “its atrocious HTML, bLiNgY graphics, and horrific backgrounds” are offensive. Many of you reading this post probably do not know anyone who uses the site either.
Yet MySpace is the 11th most visited site in the world, with unique 60 to 70 million U.S. visitors every month. Even though the site is not growing, it is a far cry from “dead” if you ask me.”
But wait!
Notice how the “Media Centers” Los Angeles, Chicago, New York are in Facebook territory. Also note how the technology power centers; Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Boston are also in the Facebook territory. Academics from Harvard, Yale, Stanford are taken by surprise in Facebookville. The great financial centers; Wall Street, LA, SF and Chicago are all Facebook. Maybe the prognosis for the future of social media is skewed by the proximity to major media, academic, and financial centers. Centralized power is the antithesis of social media, Right?
Looking for Disassociation.
Here at The Ingenesist Project we have long been looking for a disassociation between main stream media and social media. MySpace may be the social experiment that indicates a deeper and most promising trend. Is it a requirement that a social media analyst be located in Silicon Valley? Do celebrity endorsements really mean anything tangible? Does editorialized news always provide what people need?
MySpace Demographics:
The resulting sample is representative of the MySpace population. 53% of users identify themselves as women. Of all users below the age of 50, half are 21 years old or younger, and 30% are between the ages of 22 and 30. Everyone knows that Kids don’t Tweet and late adopters to Social Media are also later-in-lifers. The population of the world is finite, so when will Facebook level off as Twitter has?
Looking for reversal:
Next, we are looking for a reversal where Social Media drives s0-called traditional media – not the other way around. Can a blogger in Arizona drive the great branding strategies of the future? Can a Webinar from Montana introduce the next age of enlightenment? Can Nashville become the next great Venture Capital hub? Can a community of children in Florida band together to sustain the next great social movement. Will democracy, voting, and public opinion be driven by youth culture? Will corporate innovation respond to social priorities rather than Wall Street Priorities?
Ideas whose times are coming:
There are many examples of the above miracles of social media, however, a disassociation and reversal with traditional media will be an event of flip-floponomics of great significance – a watershed moment in the history of the next economic paradigm. Traditional media, understandably, may inadvertently be assigning a premature death to many great ideas yet to come.
