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Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

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Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#11

Post by tyree732 »

kenjackson wrote: post #8

Scoble's thesis seems way off. The problem with MySpace wasn't the technology, or even the site. It was the users of the site. It became a place that people didn't want to be associated with, while Facebook became that place. If MySpace instantly could flip a switch and turn into Facebook (codewise) hardly anything would have changed. MySpace's problem IMO wasn't technical at all. They built a service that focused on…

Another case of technical people assuming all business failures are technology related. Just like Digg failed because of NoSQL even though Reddit is frequently down due to technical issues.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#12

Post by desigooner »

In my opinion, some of it also had to do with inconsistent and ugly hacky Myspace user experience.

White / Yellow / Green / Red fonts on black backgrounds with animated gifs + glitter and broken plugins will be the response to the question "What comes to your mind when you think of Myspace UI experience?"

In comparison, the facebook experience was a lot more fresh, clean and unified.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#13

Post by hboon »

mikeryan wrote: post #10

Its funny I don't know (can't think of one) of a high traffic site that "died" due to technical failures (particularly scaling failures). Twitter had massive problems during its growth phase, Reddit has had similar problems. Does anyone have an example of a site that got "killed" by technical issues? I'm really curious. Bad products tend to die or get replaced by superior offerings. Thats the nature of business. Not…

LiveJournal maybe.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#14

Post by linuxdo0d »

The problem here isn't that MySpace ran on Microsoft or was in Los Angeles - the problem is that the reason why there was no motivation for any change (move to SF, migrate off MS) is because the founders are small minded pitiful individuals that couldn't envision a life beyond 10mm dollars. They just sat there and knew that if they could keep the site (myspace) going just long enough to vest their shares that they could grab just enough money that they wouldn't have to work.

In addition, I believe this is further evidenced by their behavior post-myspace (mindjolt and such projects). They are sitting around collecting just enough money with a high enough title that they don't have to work but are guaranteed a paycheck.

These people are NOT innovators, and are NOT market shakers, they are just people that want to collect a paycheck. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#15

Post by ntoshev »

mikeryan wrote: post #10

Its funny I don't know (can't think of one) of a high traffic site that "died" due to technical failures (particularly scaling failures). Twitter had massive problems during its growth phase, Reddit has had similar problems. Does anyone have an example of a site that got "killed" by technical issues? I'm really curious. Bad products tend to die or get replaced by superior offerings. Thats the nature of business. Not…

Friendster. Maybe there are lot's of others who just had technically competent competitors, so we never knew about them in the first place.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#16

Post by chaz »

mikeryan wrote: post #10

Its funny I don't know (can't think of one) of a high traffic site that "died" due to technical failures (particularly scaling failures). Twitter had massive problems during its growth phase, Reddit has had similar problems. Does anyone have an example of a site that got "killed" by technical issues? I'm really curious. Bad products tend to die or get replaced by superior offerings. Thats the nature of business. Not…

Friendster:

http://highscalability.com/blog/2007/11/13/friendster-lost-l...

VB: Can you tell me a bit about what you learned in your time at Friendster?

JS: For me, it basically came down to failed execution on the technology side — we had millions of Friendster members begging us to get the site working faster so they could log in and spend hours social networking with their friends. I remember coming in to the office for months reading thousands of customer service emails telling us that if we didn’t get our site working better soon, they’d be ‘forced to join’ a new social networking site that had just launched called MySpace…the rest is history. To be fair to Friendster’s technology team at the time, they were on the forefront of many new scaling and database issues that web sites simply hadn’t had to deal with prior to Friendster. As is often the case, the early pioneer made critical mistakes that enabled later entrants to the market, MySpace, Facebook & Bebo to learn and excel. As a postscript to the story, it’s interesting to note that Kent Lindstrom (CEO of Friendster) and the rest of the team have done an outstanding job righting that ship.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

mikeryan wrote: post #10

Its funny I don't know (can't think of one) of a high traffic site that "died" due to technical failures (particularly scaling failures). Twitter had massive problems during its growth phase, Reddit has had similar problems. Does anyone have an example of a site that got "killed" by technical issues? I'm really curious. Bad products tend to die or get replaced by superior offerings. Thats the nature of business. Not…

[deleted]

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#18

Post by enjo »

benologist wrote: post #3

No, Facebook did. And they did it with crusty old PHP which pretty much proves the platform isn't going to make or break your business. Finding good talent that's experienced with huge scale sites is not going to be easy regardless of language. It's not like MySpace could have been RoR and suddenly everything would have been simple, at their prime they were doing a ridiculous amount of traffic that only a handful of…

I agree with the first part, but have to quibble with the statement "there were probably 0 people experienced with PHP at Facebook's level."

I suppose that's true in absolute terms (nobody is at Facebooks level). However, there are definitely an army of really high traffic sites out there written in PHP, many of which predate Facebook. Problems of scale aren't exclusive to Facebook by any stretch.

It seems to me that Facebooks choice of PHP, in that context, was a big advantage. They've undoubtedly been able to draw on the experience that others have had at scale on very similar stacks. That might not have been as true for MySpace.

That said, MySpace had a whole host of internal issues. I briefly worked for a sister site at Fox Interactive Media and had at least some insight into what was going on over there. I'm sure someone will write a book about it one day:)

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#19

Post by gcr »

benologist wrote: post #3

No, Facebook did. And they did it with crusty old PHP which pretty much proves the platform isn't going to make or break your business. Finding good talent that's experienced with huge scale sites is not going to be easy regardless of language. It's not like MySpace could have been RoR and suddenly everything would have been simple, at their prime they were doing a ridiculous amount of traffic that only a handful of…

Facebook didn't do it with "crusty old PHP;" rather, they had to re-build their stack completely from scratch to keep up. See HipHop, their homegrown PHP-to-C compiler https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki/ and Cassandra, their own custom database system http://cassandra.apache.org/

If they stuck with crusty old PHP, I have no doubt they would never be able to manage the load.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#20

Post by [deleted] »

benologist wrote: post #3

No, Facebook did. And they did it with crusty old PHP which pretty much proves the platform isn't going to make or break your business. Finding good talent that's experienced with huge scale sites is not going to be easy regardless of language. It's not like MySpace could have been RoR and suddenly everything would have been simple, at their prime they were doing a ridiculous amount of traffic that only a handful of…

[deleted]
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