A grand unified theory of YouTube and MySpace from Slate

Paul Boutin over at Slate believes he’s on to something about what makes a popular Web 2.0 site or service succeed over others:

I was skeptical when I heard how huge video-sharing hub YouTube and social-networking hotspot MySpace have become. YouTube claims 40 million plays a day, up from 35 million just a week ago. The Washington Post recently reported that MySpace pulls more monthly visitors than Amazon and is closing in on AOL and eBay. Both sites are vague about their traffic details, though, so I ran them through Alexa, the traffic report generator favored by techies who don’t trust press releases. I nearly fell out of my chair. On Alexa’s charts, MySpace is an order of magnitude bigger than Friendster. YouTube will pass CNN any day now.

He thinks there are two reasons why some services are more successful than others: they’re easy to use and they don’t tell you what to do.

His premise is largely correct, but it’s simplifying the complexity of the social world of MySpace significantly. It also doesn’t explain why other simple-to-use social networking sites, such as LiveJournal, never quite gained the mindshare of MySpace (or, if you want a more parallel example, Facebook). MySpace isn’t popular because of its “its puppylike accessibility.” It’s popular because that’s where everyone is at the moment. When everyone was on Friendster at its height, that’s what made that a short-lived success story. The service that replaces MySpace will be popular for the same reason — because that’s where everyone is hanging out.

It harkens back to high school — you’re either a part of the in-crowd or clique, or you’re not. If you’re not, you still want to hang around them, see what they’re doing, and try and be like them. That’s what a social site like MySpace is all about — not the technology, but the people.

YouTube, on the other hand, is a real gem. It takes away all the complexity associated with video play in a person’s Web browser (which many others have done as well), but also adds the important secret ingrediant — taking away all the complexity of uploading videos in any format whatsoever to the service. Boudin hits it right on with this one.

But then he makes a bizarre comparison:

The same Alexa plots that show MySpace and YouTube obliterating top sites reveal that Flickr, Digg and del.icio.us have plateaued with audiences barely bigger than Slate’s. Photos, news, and other people’s bookmarks just aren’t as interesting as bootleg TV and checking out the hotties.

Or, could it be equally as reasonable that the reason people like YouTube and MySpace right now is because video is more compelling and entertaining than still photographs? That Digg is a technology site oriented only to the technology crowd (and therefore, a more fair comparison would be it compared to the older technology site, Slashdot, which shows very similar audience levels). And that a bookmarking service, while enjoying the Web 2.0 hype, was never really that interesting of an idea in the first place? Why share my bookmarks with you when I can share my entire persona, musical interests, and more via MySpace?

MySpace is the current “site-of-the-year” but is a horrible business, pulling in only an estimated $200 million in advertising revenue this year. World of Warcraft (WoW), on the other hand, has 6 million paid subscribers shelling out $15/month for the privilege of playing the online role-playing, multiplayer game. I’m not sure what WoW’s churn rate is (loss of old customers offset by new customers), but do the math and you’ll see that the “little” WoW phenomenon of only 6 million people could do $1 billion in revenue.

I suspect that within a year or two, MySpace will occupy a place in online history as Friendster did, and we’ll all be talking about something else again.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 29 Apr 2006
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