MySpace becomes phenomenon, faces challenges

The social networking site MySpace didn't exist three years ago, yet today it is one of the world's most popular, embraced mostly by teenagers and young adults who find it irresistible.

In the United States, it ranks second only to Yahoo in page views, and drew almost 5% of all Web site visits in March, ahead even of mighty Google, which drew little over 4%, according to Hitwise Pty..

It currently has more than 73 million registered users worldwide, and adds about 250,000 new ones every day, according to a MySpace spokesman.

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The social networking site MySpace didn't exist three years ago, yet today it is one of the world's most popular, embraced mostly by teenagers and young adults who find it irresistible.

In the United States, it ranks second only to Yahoo in page views, and drew almost 5% of all Web site visits in March, ahead even of mighty Google, which drew little over 4%, according to Hitwise Pty..

It currently has more than 73 million registered users worldwide, and adds about 250,000 new ones every day, according to a MySpace spokesman.

Users set up personal profile pages, where they can post photos, keep a blog journal, link to friends' profiles and see messages left by others. Teens use their profile pages mostly to post notes to their friends and classmates, commenting on parties they went to or things that happened at school.

It has unexpectedly become the preferred Web starting point, snatching that title from Google in the same way Google took it from Yahoo, says Bill Tancer, Hitwise's general research manager.

"Although it's not a search engine, it's the biggest threat to Google today because it's taking over as the place you go to first on the Internet," Tancer says.

And all of this from a site whose success can't be attributed to technical or conceptual innovations.

In fact, the look of many MySpace user pages is rustic in terms of Web design, and the site lacks key Web 2.0 features, such as the ability for users to tag content and for developers to build applications, or "mashups", on its platform. "It's barely Web 1.5," says Allen Weiner, a Gartner analyst.

Conventional wisdom indicates its success should have been attained by larger and more experienced competitors such as Microsoft Corp's MSN unit, Google, Yahoo or AOL, or established social networking players such as Friendster.

And yet, MySpace is on top -- why?

First, MySpace was among the first social networking sites to also adopt other hot services, such as blogging, multimedia content streaming, photo sharing and communication tools such as e-mail and instant messaging.

"They hit on the magic combination of all those things," says David Card, a Jupiter Research analyst.

Another master stroke was catering to teenagers and young adults, an audience then grossly underserved by social networking sites. With its heavy emphasis on music and entertainment in general -- more than 1 million bands have promoted their music there -- the site became the preferred vehicle for youngsters to interact with friends and express themselves via easy-to-make personal profile pages.

"It's not an adult site that has been repurposed. They did a nice job of designing it for [teens and young adults] and they built up a strong advocacy among them early," says analyst Rob Enderle from Enderle Group.

"[Teens and young adults] who spent all their time instant messaging on AOL went to MySpace, where they could do something AOL could never figure out," Weiner says.

Still, not all is perfect in the kingdom of MySpace. It faces significant challenges which observers say could lead to its downfall.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.