bbc.co.uk Navigation

Rory Cellan-Jones

Has MySpace lost its cool?

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 19 Feb 09, 11:29 GMT

I'm not entirely sure that Chis DeWolfe enjoyed our encounter at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The affable American, co-founder and chief executive of MySpace, was jet-lagged, having stepped off a flight from Los Angeles that morning into a punishing schedule of interviews and the launch of a new mobile offering. Then I arrived to interview him for radio - and to point a video camera at him for this blog:

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.


I spent half an hour suggesting that MySpace just wasn't cool any more. To his credit, he didn't lose his cool - just kept on insisting I was wrong to suggest that he'd been left standing by Facebook.

There are all sorts of ways of comparing the audiences of social networking sites. I quoted Nielsen figures, showing that Facebook's global users now numbered 110 million, compared with the 83 million using MySpace. Chris DeWolfe punched back with figures showing MySpace had 76 million US users and 135 million worldwide, but the number he was really keen on was one from Comscore showing the average MySpace user in the US spent 266 minutes on the site each month, around 100 minutes more than Facebook users. But whatever you think of Nielsen or Comscore the trend seems clear - Facebook has been gaining on MySpace, particularly outside the US, and looks to be the social network with momentum behind it.

Ah, but here's the key difference, according to Mr De Wolfe - MySpace makes money. Good point. From the start, the site was focussed on profits and once it joined Rupert Murdoch's News Corp stable, telling the boss it was all about eyeballs, not the bottom line, was never going to wash. So MySpace's CEO says it has been profitable throughout its history - and he reckons it is the only social network making money. In its most recent results, however, News Corp reported a drop in revenues from the division which includes MySpace, blaming it partly on the cost of launching the social network's new music offering.

Like almost every Web 2.0 company, MySpace depends almost entirely on advertising for revenues and, whatever anyone said a few months ago, online advertising isn't recession-proof. "It's certainly got softer" was how Chris DeWolfe described the advert market, but maintained that his business was holding up better than others.

Fashion, however, is everything in this area. The first social network to take off in the UK was Friends Reunited, which ITV bought for £120 million in 2005, when it was already going out of fashion, and is now apparently trying to offload for a lot less. I'm too old to tell whether MySpace has lost the cool factor but a teenager of my acquaintance was pretty forthright in his verdict: "It's dead. Nobody I know uses it any more."

But at least it discovered a business model before the bad times came - unlike some networks that are seeing tremendous growth in traffic but have precious little revenue to show for it. As Chris DeWolfe said, gathering himself for a punchy soundbite at the end of our radio interview: "Time will tell whether they can figure out how to make money - we have."

Darren Waters

Speed Diary: Day Three

  • Darren Waters
  • 19 Feb 09, 09:44 GMT

I was planning to write this post while connected to my 50Mbps broadband pipe but I have had to shift to my ADSL connection because of continued problems accessing the net over wireless. My topic was going to be online gaming but a few technical issues got in the way.

I should stress that this ongoing problem with wi-fi is not related to the 50Mbps service. When connected via Ethernet I am consistently getting speeds of about 45Mbps downstream.

This is a problem which highlights the vagaries of wireless networks. I'm sure everyone reading this has had a problem with a wi-fi network at some point and so my tale of woe will be pretty familiar.

Even though I can connect to the net my speeds are very unpredictable and even casual browsing has become painful.

"Looking up", "Waiting for" and "Connecting to" have become the by-words of my experience as my browser struggles to load websites.

However, if I were to do a Speed Test (assuming I can load the website) it reports back that I'm getting speeds of between 15Mbps and 30Mbps - more than enough to enjoy lightning fast web surfing, even if it is well below what I should be getting at the upper limit.

So what is the problem? When it comes to wireless there are so many potential issues that can affect your connection speed and experience:

  • Other wireless networks on channels close to your router
  • Interference from other devices operating in the 2.4Ghz range - from cordless telephones to microwave ovens
  • Thick walls in an old house can block or slow speeds
  • Mis-configuration of the router
  • A low-spec computer

I've ensured none of those issues are the cause in this particular case. But experience with wireless routers and similar problems over the years with dropped connections and slow speeds lead me to believe that sometimes wireless networks have a mind of their own and just refuse to work.

Hardly a scientific explanation then, but before I throw in the towel completely I will be swapping in a different router, albeit an identical model, and finding out if my laptops have a problem.

If there's a lesson from all of this - and I sincerely hope I'll fix the problem - it is that any connection you have, be it ADSL, ADSL2+ or cable, is only as fast as the weakest point on your network.

I may have a fantastically fat broadband pipe right up to my door but if I can't enjoy it, then what is the point?

A few people have suggested Powerline adaptors - I have a couple in the attic and I could give them a whirl but I'm going to hit a ceiling of 20Mbps and I prefer the freedom of roaming around the house with my laptop.

Assuming my problems are solved: I've had lots of really good ideas from readers about how to test my connection speeds and I'll be using a lot of them today and reporting on them tomorrow.

UPDATE: I've swapped in a new .11n router and so far, things seem to be going well. I'll keep monitoring before I definitively declare the problem is solved.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk