Have MySpace and Bebo started to fall behind in the competitive world of social networking. This is the question posed by Jemima Kiss and Charles Arthur of The Guardian. The tech experts try to examine the apparent decline of 'once industry darlings' and the simultaneous rise of their rivals.
Going back into the past, the article notes Rupert Murdoch's buyout of Intermix Media and its MySpace site was arguably the moment the whole world started taking social networking seriously. This was in July 2005.The acquisition in spite of the astonishment of his old media rivals at the $580m price tag was vindicated by a deal with Google in October 2006 that guaranteed News Corp a whopping $900m in ad revenue over the next three and a half years, providing set traffic targets were met.
The Google deal will be over at the end of June 2010, and with it about half of MySpace's revenue! The search engine giant has already informed it isn't really benefiting from the deal, though Owen van Natta, MySpace's new chief executive, tried to play down the importance of the agreement, stating enhancing user experience was the priority.
The latest data from web metrics firms is not too encouraging. They all suggest that MySpace is in decline - whether it's in terms of number of page views, or time spent on the site per user. The same holds true for the British-devised Bebo, purchased by AOL in March 2008 for nearly $850m.Its numbers are also getting worse.
"For both, such a reverse could well herald a decline towards obscurity – similar to that suffered by another British social networking website, Friends Reunited bought by ITV for £120m in December 2005, recently valued at only £20m," the tech writers caution.
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