Is Myspace still really around?

Two of the owners of Myspace were in Chicago last week talking about Myspace and so I thought I would bring up the topic in today’s blog. Is Myspace still really around? The answer is technically “yes” but I am not sure.

Prior to 2011, Myspace was on a terrible downward spiral and was known to most social media experts as the site that Facebook stomped on to become the social media leader. It battled a terrible reputation of being laden with age-misrepresented individuals looking to prey on young users. That’s when a group of investors, including Justin Timberlake, bought the social media platform for $35 million and decided to bring it back into the limelight.

According to Chris Vanderhook, one of the owners, the platform is “now in its ‘third or fourth’ inning but that they as owners have only taken one swing of the bat.” It has a very cool, fresh look to it and has great features.It just has not been grasped be nearly enough people.

According to a third party research company, Myspace has approximately 15 million monthly users – not nearly the 1.15 billion that Facebook boasts – but their popularity is growing. This is especially true with the youngest social media users – many teenagers. Chris quotes that 70% of their users are under 34.

As for how people are using Myspace, most are using it on mobile devices, like Twitter. Right now, more than 50% of their users are viewing and editing content from mobile devices. As a reference, Facebook typically sees around a 38% mobile usage rate (at their highest, 43%) with an upward trend.

Myspace’s greatest pride is the success that it has seen within the music community. It claims to have 14.2 million artists on its platform (47k major label artists; 86.7k independent label artists; and 14m unsigned artists). It also claims to host 53 million songs with a more than 13k songs uploaded each day.

I am not yet sold on the long-term viability of Myspace. I think Myspace will continue grow but never reach the dominance that it once held in the social media world.