MySpace注定要滅亡
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????看起來，MySpace在經歷了漫長而痛苦的衰亡過程后，終于要壽終正寢，永遠安息了。本周新聞媒體對該公司的報道讀起來不免有些訃告的意味：目前，這家新聞集團（The News Corp.）旗下的社交網絡正在計劃大量裁員。很顯然，這是在為減負作準備，以降低公司成本。?《彭博商業周刊》（Bloomberg BusinessWeek）的一篇悼文詳細回顧了MySpace的成長和衰落。此后MySpace就出現了上述動向。 ????《彭博商業周刊》本周的封面報道題為《MySpace的崛起和可恥的衰落》（The Rise and Inglorious Fall of MySpace）。該文稱“管理上的失誤、先天不足的合并、以及難以數計的嚴重失誤加速了MySpace的衰落。” ????傳媒巨頭新聞集團于2005年以5.8億美元將MySpace收至麾下，其拙劣的管理加速了該社交網絡的毀滅，這點毋庸置疑。但是，MySpace到底是否從創建伊始便已注定要滅亡，這點倒是頗有爭議。 ????現在人們已經不大記得，MySpace在人們眼中曾一度是新銳的代名詞。2003年創建之初，該網站主要致力于獨立音樂，大量樂隊紛紛加入，自己動手建立樂隊主頁，并借此發行其創作的音樂。但是，該網站從未切實嘗試利用這些核心用戶。任何酷斃了事物幾乎無一例外地注定有一天將不再流行。就在MySpace被新聞集團收購之后不久，盡管該網站彼時仍然在不斷成長壯大，但有關它會沒落的預測已開始四處流傳。之后不久，Facebook便聲譽鵲起。 ????Facebook問世之初給人的印象是既具書卷氣又夠酷，現在，它早已超越了酷不酷的層次。更為重要的是，相比MySpace，該網站的易用性要強出許多，也更為貼近社會主流。與此同時，MySpace依然堅持俗艷的設計，只要點擊打開主頁，音樂便會自動播放。對于普通用戶而言，搖滾小子（Kid Rock）震耳欲聾的歌聲不請自來，隨意飄進耳內，沒什么比這更令人倒胃口的了。 ????費利克斯?吉萊特在《商業周刊》的封面報道中分析說，MySpace用戶能夠自行修改用戶主頁的設計，其實不失為該網站“最早的一個突破”。最初，由于網站開發人員的失誤，反而誤打誤撞，結果是用戶有權在其主頁中插入超文本標記語言（HTML），“隨心所欲地擺弄各種背景顏色，對其頁面進行個性化設計，整個網站最終變成了一個電子樂橫行的萬花筒。這種奇異的審美趣味最終倒成了該網站的標志。” ????對于當時的MySpace用戶而言，這不失為一大賣點。但對那些恰恰因為這一點而不愿加入的人而言，它無疑是個漏洞。MySpace幾乎是故意排斥年紀較長的人、智商比較高的人、以及更接近社會主流的人加入該網站。相反，Facebook則始終嚴格控制其用戶頁面設計，確保其中不會出現耀眼的圖形和艷麗的色彩。只要愿意，上了年紀的大媽級人物也可以加入Facebook。重要的是，隨著時間的流逝，真的有人這么干了。 ????正是靠著這種樸素的頁面呈現方式，Facebook超越了“酷還是不酷”的問題。現在，對多數人而言，Facebook談不上酷不酷，那就是它的存在方式。像電子郵件賬戶一樣，它就是個用得著的應用程序。與老朽的MySpace不同，加入Facebook并不意味著就得公開個人的社會身份。MySpace用戶一度以“MySpace人”自居，但沒人會如法炮制，稱自己是“Facebook人”。潮人們與他（她）們的母親可以在Facebook上互為好友，而沒人會因此感到大驚小怪，原因也正出于此。同樣地，你可以跟自己的上司在Facebook上成為朋友，而且會欣然接受高中同學的朋友邀請，即便現在你們已經形同陌路。 ????出于同樣的原因，如今Facebook的全球用戶數已逼近10億，而MySpace每個月都會流失幾百萬的用戶；不僅如此，今年1月，該公司曾裁員500人，現在，又計劃在僅剩的400人中，再解雇300人。結果剩下的就只有龐大的網絡基礎設施，迅速衰減的用戶群（而且從人口統計學角度看，也不那么有吸引力的），還有那即便不太賺錢但仍然可觀的網絡流量資源。 ????當然，導致MySpace沒落的原因多種多樣。成立之初，它只是Intermix媒體（Intermix Media）公司的一部分，后者因為一些劣跡而聲譽不佳。但是，在彼時的紐約總檢察長艾利奧特?斯皮策下令開始對Intermix進行調查之前，當時該公司的所有者拒絕讓MySpace獨立，之后便將該網站以低價賣給了新聞集團。對一家以新銳為生存方式的網站來說，沒什么比成為魯伯特?默多克的私人財產更糟糕的了。 ????與Facebook不同，MySpace從未想過融入網絡世界，即允許用戶在其MySpace主頁中隨便轉貼外部資料，或者使用其賬戶對外部網頁發表評論等操作。MySpace的公司法人背負著實現季度營業目標的壓力，這無疑窒息了網站的創新能力。盡管如此，他們也從未想過像Facebook那樣從外部品牌尋找營業額的增長點。 ????但是，即便存在上述種種失誤，如果當時MySpace能面向社會各類受眾，它仍然有可能存活下來。現在，新聞集團急著以2,000萬美元的低價將該網站出手，金額甚至不到其2005年收購價的4%。而Facebook呢？如今其身價已飚升至700億美元，是MySpace目前售價的3,500倍。 ????譯者：大海 |
????It appears that MySpace might finally find sweet relief from its long, slow, painful demise. News reports on the company this week read like obituaries: The News Corp.-owned social network is planning massive layoffs, apparently in preparation to unload the company for a pittance. ????Those developments followed a detailed post-mortem from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Its cover story this week, "The Rise and Inglorious Fall of MySpace," recounts how "[m]ismanagement, a flawed merger, and countless strategic blunders have accelerated Myspace's fall…" ????While it's surely true that MySpace's doom was hastened by News Corp.'s (NWS) bumbling management since the media giant bought the company for $580 million in 2005, it could be argued that the MySpace was doomed from the beginning. ????It's difficult to remember now, but MySpace was once considered cool. When it started in 2003, it was largely devoted to indie music, with bands joining to create profiles for themselves and circulate their music. The site never really tried to capitalize on that core audience. Anything that's considered cool is almost guaranteed to fall out of fashion. Not long after News Corp.'s purchase, predictions of MySpace's fall began circulating, even as the site was still growing. And not long after that, Facebook began to rise in popularity. ????Facebook, having been sort-of nerdy-cool in its early days, has since transcended the whole cool-uncool spectrum. More importantly, it was much more user-friendly and accessible to the mainstream. MySpace, meantime, insisted on sticking with a garish design and music that autostarted when a profile was opened. Nothing turns people off like a Kid Rock song blasting unbidden into their headphones. ????In his BusinessWeek article, Felix Gillette argues that MySpace users' ability to tweak their profile designs was one of the site's "first breakthroughs." The developers had accidentally allowed users to insert HTML into their profiles, "allowing them to play around with the background colors and personalize their pages, leading to the site's kaleidoscopic, techno-junkyard aesthetic, which became its trademark." ????For the site's users at the time, this was a feature. For users who might otherwise have signed up, it was a bug. MySpace has almost willfully discouraged older people, smarter people, and more mainstream people from joining. Facebook, meanwhile, has kept tight control over its design, which has remained free of blinking graphics and gaudy color schemes. Your elderly aunt could join it if she wanted to. And as time went on, she did. ????Facebook's vanilla presentation has helped it transcend questions of "cool." For most people, it's now considered neither cool nor uncool – it's just sort of there. It's almost a utility, like an email account. Unlike with the old MySpace, joining Facebook isn't about making a statement about your social identity. Nobody thinks of themselves as a "Facebooker" the way some people once thought of themselves as "MySpacers." That's why hipsters and their moms can be Facebook friends with each other and nobody thinks it's strange. It's why you can be Facebook friends with your boss, and why you readily accept friend requests from old high school friends with whom you have little in common. ????And that's why, as Facebook grows toward a billion users worldwide, MySpace is losing millions of users every month and is now reported to be planning layoffs of perhaps up to 300 of the 400 workers it has left after it let go 500 people in January. All that's left is a clunky networking infrastructure, a rapidly dwindling (and not very demographically desirable) member roster, and a source of still-considerable, if not very lucrative, Web traffic. ????Of course, there are many reasons for MySpace's fall. It started as part of a company, Intermix, that had the stink of sleaze about it. But the owners at the time refused to spin MySpace off before Eliot Spitzer, then New York's attorney general, began investigating Intermix, and the site was sold to News Corp. at a discount. For a site that relies on cool, nothing could be worse than ownership by Rupert Murdoch. ????Unlike Facebook, MySpace also never thought to interweave itself with the rest of the Web, allowing users to easily port outside material into their profiles, and to use their accounts to, for example, comment on outside Web pages. MySpace's corporate owners were forced to hit quarterly revenue targets, which stifled innovation, but they never thought to seek revenue through outside brands as Facebook has. ????But even with all those stumbles, MySpace could possibly have endured if only it had simply made itself accessible to people from all walks of life. And now News Corp. is hurriedly trying to sell the thing off for as little as $20 million, or less than 4 percent of what it paid in 2005. And Facebook? It's valued at $70 billion - or 3,500 times what MySpace is apparently worth. |
