March 28th, 2011 by John

It wasn’t supposed to be like this! MySpace’s redesign was supposed to herald the dawn of a new era for one of the world’s first and most popular social networking sites – instead, figures released by comScore show that MySpace is haemorrhaging unique users. In fact, between January and February of this year over 10 million uniques have deserted MySpace. MySpace has also announced that it has to shed staff worldwide – things aren’t looking so good for MySpace as the years roll on…

Approximately half of its staff globally are being cut – a real fall from grace as it used to be the one and only place on the internet for new artists to launch their music careers. It’s looking less likely though that those heights will ever be hit again as people desert MySpace on a year-by-year basis. Almost 50 million are leaving the site annually – that figure may be even higher this year if 10 million people have already left in the first two months of 2011.

MySpace was, of course, bought out by News Corp in 2005 for a grand total of £330 million. Today’s valuation of MySpace would no doubt be much much lower. And the reality of it is that it’s no surprise as MySpace has failed to capitalise on its social position, and has been overtaken by social behemoths such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

MySpace’s problems are that it is now purely an entertainment destination, and that it decided to stay in the music niche it carved out for itself all those years ago. MySpace still attracts a huge amount of organic users, and though that number is receding on an almost daily basis, all is not lost. But is there anyone at News Corp with a vision clear and ambitious enough to turn MySpace around?

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