The social media industry is maturing. You can see it as Facebook is starting to generate large amount of revenues, samewise as Youtube. Twitter also is starting to show very interesting skills to monetize its audience. But as some actors are getting stronger, some others have been left aside. And not small ones: My Space and Six Apart.
There was a time, not so long ago, Myspace was ruling the social media world. It was actually the first social media to hit the main stream. It was loved by teenagers and young people to access news from music artists. Myspace has also succeed big time while they have been bought by NewsCorporation.
Six Apart also experienced large success while blogging sprung up all around the world. Most of blogs, especially the most influential ones, where hosted and design by Typepad. It was actually a great success, because it was I believe the only main platform to success while not being free. Blogging is for sure declining, as people are getting more and more busy on social media. I keep on blogging because it really help me in developing my business ideas, and to construct my vision of customer relationship management in the future. But for regular people I totally understand why they have switched to Facebook.
But those two companies are going in limbo. I read 2 articles recently, where Six Apart is borrowing some money to pursue its activities, and Myspace is heading toward a new direction, after having failed to compete with Facebook. Actually, MySpace situation seems to be more problematic, as they are already loosing money while others are just starting off generating revenues. The goal of Myspace is to retain its audience, which shows how desperate they are while most of the social media audience is rocketing. Also, what I don’t understand in this article, is why they say Myspace is no longer a social media. What is it then? What will it become. A lot of things seems unclear.
But we should see the bright side of those news. It means that the landscape of social media becomes clearer, and hence, as clear leaders emerge, social media is now a main stream media.
