“The rise and inglorious fall of MySpace” by Felix Gillette. P.57.

Demise of MySpace. Article interviews one of the founder, DeWolf.
[tag: social media]
Pertinent points:
– after the startup w acquired by NewsCorp, the larger conglomerate didn’t have the cultural DNA; not MySpace users.
– pressure to generate revenue; shifted to ads that seems indiscriminate.
– developed all features themselves; should’ve focused on a few key ones and let others develop the rest.
– ran.into “technology debt”; built on Cold Fusion; reached tech limits and migration to new .Net platform had issues.
– didn’t have culture of testing and refining features properly before rollout; buggy.
– victim of negative perception about it being a haven for online predators.
– Facebook overtook it as preferred platform.

I think MySpace also lost focus. From socialization and cool to becoming exploitive on revenue, and then became a music site (whereas Facebook focused on being social). I also felt the interface was becoming cumbersome and became complicated over time.

On the Europe debt crisis; Greece. P8. “how to save Greece”, peter coy.
“Greece is a chronic defaulter. Since winning independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1832, the nation has spent half its time in various stages of default or restructuring. At one point in the middle of the 19th century, Greece was in default–meaning out of compliance with debt obligations–for 53 straight years, according to This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by economists Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff.”

P68. Multi-level marketing empire (Market America), “You, Too, Can Live the Dream” by Karl Taro Greenfeld.