It's successful because when it got created, it offered a music service that nobody else did.
This is the safe-for-the-media version of why MySpace was successful. It's wrong. Pardon my crassness, but Myspace was successful because it had more sluts.
At the time, Friendster made it hard to sign up, impossible to view profiles unless you were a member, and it actively deleted semi-risque photos. Myspace did none of these things. Anyone could sign up, anyone could view profiles, and teenage women were encouraged to post tawdry photos of themselves. There were even loads of bogus profiles of babes in bikinis.
The music stuff was an interesting side note, but in the beginning it rarely even worked right and certainly wasn't why people joined the site. They joined because it was essentially a dating site without the social stigma of being a dating site.
Huh! I didn't know what about Friendster. (I was pretty late onto the MySpace bandwagon: only joined in 2005.)
I would suspect that the people who remain on MySpace, however, do so for the bands. The sluttiness has moved its way towards Facebook, at least in my social circle.
On top of that, MySpace was founded by a bunch of people with background in direct email marketing. So they knew all the greyhat techniques for getting users in the door.
This is the safe-for-the-media version of why MySpace was successful. It's wrong. Pardon my crassness, but Myspace was successful because it had more sluts.
At the time, Friendster made it hard to sign up, impossible to view profiles unless you were a member, and it actively deleted semi-risque photos. Myspace did none of these things. Anyone could sign up, anyone could view profiles, and teenage women were encouraged to post tawdry photos of themselves. There were even loads of bogus profiles of babes in bikinis.
The music stuff was an interesting side note, but in the beginning it rarely even worked right and certainly wasn't why people joined the site. They joined because it was essentially a dating site without the social stigma of being a dating site.