Word on the street is that MySpace is calling it quits… at least in the Netherlands. With an office opened in Amsterdam less than a year ago already shutting down it would seem that MySpace has had enough of a beating from Hyves.
Hyves (in case you aren’t Dutch) is the Dutch based social networking site that MySpace attempted to aquire back in QTR1 of this year but was obviously unsuccessful. Word on the street is that the site did pull more than 250,000 users giving it a total of 650,000 from launch – and while this would seem impressive it did little more than dent Hyves over 5 million user base.
Will MySpace make a comeback with it’s MySpace Music launch scheduled for Europe launch in 2009? If it doesn’t then it would seem that Netlog and Facebook could be the last of the major players looking to get that desired foothold that Chris DeWolfe (MySpace CEO) couldn’t seem to manage.
More and more this blogger is a fan of Facebook and LinkedIn for both professional and casual networking. I’ve found my original comparison of LinkedIn to suit & tie networking, Facebook to khaki & polo networking, and MySpace to cut-offs & flipflops (shirt optional) networking to be more and more on the mark as MySpace continues to be riddled with hard to read user pages and band spam.
Of course MySpace does take a few hints from the successful Facebook – the case of the new profile editor that’s been released in Canada (Hey, Chris – why not US?) for testing. The new interface gives the users more controle over the profile and allows them to not only drag and drop modules but to more easily add Javascript, HTML, and third party modules via a FLASH based editor.As an aside: It doesn’t yet work with IE6 – although I’m not losing any sleep over it.
I’m left to wonder if DeWolfe really thought that the MySpace brand carried with it the weight to pull traffic from such an established network as Hyves or if he went in knowing it was a longshot. Is the flop an "ego busting" or just the result of a longshot gamble? I don’t know enough about Netherland social networking to rightfully proclaim that flip-flops are the virtual networking footwear of choice.
