Posted on 04/20/2007 1:14:39 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Cape Town - Popular social-networking site MySpace will fail in a few years time, says self-confessed geek Jimmy Wales.
Wales, founder of the free web encyclopaedia Wikipedia, is currently in South Africa for a digital freedom tour.
MySpace, owned by News Corp and with reportedly more than 100 million registered users, "hurts my eyes", Wales says.
"There's way too much advertising and they're not really respecting their own community."
Wikipedia is another matter, he says. "We're not similar at all - you get involved in a community."
Wales, who confesses to spending lots of time on the web - "I pretty much roll out of bed and log on" - says when he started Wikipedia he knew it was a big idea, but he never imagined it would be in the Top 10 websites.
Wikipedia is reportedly the ninth most popular website in the world.
"I was thinking more in the Top 100."
Wikipedia has been hailed as a revolutionary tool, but it has also raised concerns about errors and accuracy. Wales says there will be some new software features to limit errors, but stresses that where others would respond to errors by locking down, his response is to be even more open.
And how does his family react to his internet celebrity status? "It's fun for them" and normal for his six-year-old daughter, who was born two weeks before the launch of Wikipedia.
Asked if he would be willing to sell to the big guns like Google and Yahoo, he said no, and that he is working on "the next big thing that will hit the internet" instead.
His free, completely open source transparent search engine, will have a "huge degree of human community oversight".
Users can expect to see it towards the end of the year.
And his advice to aspiring online entrepreneurs? "Find something you love and go for it."
"It's good to have a geek hobby that turns into a career."
Ping
“Guitar bands have no future in rock and roll” - Decca music executive 1962 after listening to a demo from some band from Liverpool.
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
— Bill Gates
I have no doubt myspace will close down. Too much trouble brewing because of it.
It’s about time someone said that. Myspace is horribly annoying, with the ability to easily repost chain letters as bulletins, the vulnerability to hacks and spam, the horrendous advertising, the all-too-frequent abuse of HTML that makes pages take forever to load or scroll down, the music players that automatically start, the fact that there’s never a way to confirm ownership of the profile, and on top of all that the frequency with which the site won’t work or only works on certain browsers, it gets easily overloaded if it’s a holiday, etc. I like Facebook a lot more, it’s neater, simpler, I’ve never encountered a hacked profile that posted spam, and you know who people are. If Facebook somehow integrates a music section for bands and such, I think it would easily overtake Myspace. Also, the Facebook developers are a lot more receptive to what their users want and don’t want.
It’s about time someone said that. Myspace is horribly annoying, with the ability to easily repost chain letters as bulletins, the vulnerability to hacks and spam, the horrendous advertising, the all-too-frequent abuse of HTML that makes pages take forever to load or scroll down, the music players that automatically start, the fact that there’s never a way to confirm ownership of the profile, and on top of all that the frequency with which the site won’t work or only works on certain browsers, it gets easily overloaded if it’s a holiday, etc. I like Facebook a lot more, it’s neater, simpler, I’ve never encountered a hacked profile that posted spam, and you know who people are. If Facebook somehow integrates a music section for bands and such, I think it would easily overtake Myspace. Also, the Facebook developers are a lot more receptive to what their users want and don’t want.
— Bill Gates
Look at my profile.
There will be a new competitor that will beat MySpace at its own game.
“There will be a new competitor that will beat MySpace at its own game.”
And someone else will come along and beat them.
As long as people feel so important that they think the whole world needs to know about them, these types of sites will prosper. That means forever.
Wikipedia and Google/Gmail don’t respect their users either.
Wiki uses gaystapo tactics to silences critics of homosexuality and other politically incorrect accounts of history.
Google snoops mail and browsing habits for commercial advertising plugs. Wonder what else they may be building a profile for. Google bows to Communist China.
As for Myspace, yeah, they treat users poorly and still have stability problems. The crass commercialism and overhyping of MSM junk is offputting. Then again, the beast is pumping their prepackaged pablum in any “underground” site (even FR gets spammed by drive by posters). In a world of alternate media, the establishment has to pretend to be your friend and not commercially connected to the mass media.
Add to this problems of malicious hackers, spammers, et al and their billion dollar site doesn’t look so good. For now there is confusion where to “leap to”.
I personally saw Mr. Gates give that sort of an answer in the early 1990s yet people still tell me he’s a computer genuis. No. He employs semi-talented engineers and agressively markets their product. He doesn’t have a broad vision or foresight.
His programmers also are not genuises because there are always THOUSANDS of known issues when they go to market. In any other industry, they’d be facing product liability lawsuits with that sort of track record.
The ability to repost bulletins is fine. Tired of “spam” from a friend? Ask that friend to limit posting per day or DROP THEM.
Easiest ability to opt out of “spam” in the world. And I suggest locking down your profile (don’t let people post unapproved or bands to ask to add you or even people to ask to add you without email/name information). If they really want to contact you, they can still email you on myspace and tell you they’d like to be added.
The repost feature is not automated (you have to cut and paste to do it) and permits your network to exploit the “6 degrees of separation” that allow you to promote an event or news beyond your close circle of friends.
As to hacker exploits. Java controls permit too much control that a stranger should not have. Basic HTML doesn’t need these gadgets. The network community should do a better job shunning glitzy trash to opens to door to hacker control.
It is possible to block the advertising (I did it for awhile using something that scanned for banner URLs and put in a null address). With all of the flash and animated gif advertising now, I want to do that. Good thing is it kills advertising for all sites (including news sites) not just Myspace. Again web advertising is a problem all over the net.
And yes people are using programs to hype up their pages with bad HTML code that takes forever to load even on high speed networkds. Tell your friends they are idiots and have made their pages needlesss complex.
And some site will probably eventually incorporate music and be overtaken by Viacommie. They own Infinity Broadcasting Radio and MTV/BET/VH1 etc. They were offered Myspace before Newscorp but didn’t think you could make money off it.
Every MySpace page I’ve seen looks like a nightmare of clutter. They must market themselves to teens and teen-minded adults.
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