Is Cleanliness Next to Emptiness in MySpace?
Now that MySpace owner News Corp has begun cleaning up the all-ages social networking site — removing 200,000 profiles recently that contained “objectionable content” that might have scared away potential advertisers — some observers have begun to question whether the service will continue to enjoy the wild popularity it has been met with so far. The site has some 66 million profiles on it, but some feel censorship will lower that number drastically. “Teens and twenty something will likely say “screw it” to News Corp’s attempts at cleanliness and move to other social media spaces or create ones none of us has heard of yet,” says ad-watching blog AdRants.
Whether MySpace users will soon start leaving the service in droves remains to be seen, but it does seem like MySpace is reaching a watershed moment where it will have to decide what kind of animal it will become. Rupert Murdoch seems to have decided that already, actually. And there are indications that its most robust user base may not be fully satisfied with the service, not because there are too many dirty pictures on it, but because there’s not enough privacy.
Information on MySpace is open to schools, employers and recruiters trying to make their choices of who to take on, and many students aren’t happy about the fact. In addition, the site is increasingly being used as a way to organize social events, including mass protests. The presence of too many prying eyes could have a chilling effect on such uses, and on MySpace traffic in general.
In fact, that’s one thing the 3pointD world will have to grapple wtih, eventually: how do we protect what needs to be protected? What kind of rights to privacy and free speech are we going to enjoy online? And who’s going to look out for them? It might not seem like it at the moment, but these will soon become important questions, well worth considering more closely than we usually do.
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[…] MySpace is well within their rights to delete these profiles. In fact, they should have been deleted a long time ago. It should have been no big deal - part of their ongoing business practices - rather than a reaction to advertiser concerns. Then they could have just quietly told advertisers that they were being more aggressive about enforcing their existing policies. Instead, by making a big deal of it, they have prompted negative reaction from users and even from industry analysts. […]
[…] Advertisers - Getting in on the act? Of course, where the people are, advertising soon follows. As advertisers attempt to gain a foothold in these networks, the people tend to scatter and re-form. However, advertisers and users seem to be hesitantly skeptical of each other, especially in these social networks. Because these are user-directed, content can (and usually does) take on an adult nature. When owners of the sites attempt to “clean up” for advertisers, core users who perceive a change and quelling of their freedoms will tend to leave. NewsCorp finds themselves in this clean-up predicament. […]