Summary
As soon as social networking sites become cool, conglomerates, or stakeholders, take control and "corporatize" their strategies. Instead of building out stems and features that innovate and enhance consumers experiences and behavior they become corporate fodder and feed the laws of diminishing returns.
Analysis
Is anyone surprised that MySpace growth is slowing? Is anyone surprised that Yahoo! is sneaking around thinking about buying it? MySpace's old direction was to be a social networking platform. It's new direction, become a more efficient and effective media channel. What's lost, the consumer. What's lost is the purpose and momentum with its original users. MySpace, by diversifying and taking on Youtube will continue to become more irrelevant to new users.
MySpaceTV may be fun for existing users, but it's not going to draw new users. YouTube is not going to ever be the social networking site that MySpace is. Both may be, and some would argue, are huge media channels. But both will suffer from trying to repurpose each others competencies for more profits. Same crap will be on MyspaceTV as Youtube. Same masses of child molesters will profile on Youtube.
And while AOL and Yahoo! (I mean Myspace and Youtube) fight for supremacy, Google, I mean (insert company X here) will launch with the purpose of being a media channel and out maneuver them both by offering users what they want from a social network and online video.
Now that analogy doesn't exactly fit. But, it seems as companies such as Youtube and MySpace fight each other over the same people with essentially the same content - someone smarter than them both will improve upon the content available and wave as they run past them.
Facebook may be those guys, but really, I'm not sure I think so yet. It seems to me, they want to play the same game as the other guys.
