I don't think myspace's greater flexibility was its downfall. The problem was that over time, the end-user experience stagnated while the company focused on maximizing revenue from ads and such. Based on comments above, it seems that while facebook was busy introducing incremental social networking improvements myspace was busy trying to make users click more so that more ads would load.
Myspace had some of the most annoying ads on the web. Heaven forbid you tried to use the site without adblock.
I think that was the bigger problem. Had they continued to focus on improving the end-user experience rather than extracting every last bit of value, they might still be a viable competitor to facebook. The freedom to customize would be one of a very few features facebook could not easily copy.
Myspace had some of the most annoying ads on the web. Heaven forbid you tried to use the site without adblock.
I think that was the bigger problem. Had they continued to focus on improving the end-user experience rather than extracting every last bit of value, they might still be a viable competitor to facebook. The freedom to customize would be one of a very few features facebook could not easily copy.