MySpace sucks: that's what its owner thinks

[matgb]

Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace a few years back. He likes to make money out of stupid people. His official biographer summarises his opinion of the site and its users:

I don’t think that’s true. I think it is—if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.

Which, in slightly less fragrent terms, is what I've read about the demographics of MySpace use as opposed to Facebook use (Livejournal demographics are a subset of the Facebook demographic, Facebook is used by educated people, LJ is used by educated goths, geeks and weirdoes). All of this via the excellent jleach, who is The Independent's digital media editor.

I was planning on doing a whole "LJ has grown up and poached The Independent from Six Apart" post, but I haven't. So here we go. LJ has poached the Indy and is working on others. They were using the execrable TypePad service for their blogs, now they're on here. And promoting LJ to their readers and website users. So there's a big influx of slightly confused new users with the 'Independent Minds' logo as their default userpic. If you see it, be nice, a lot of them are all confused.

Oh, and my 'Livejournal is doomed' posts that used to be fairly regular aren't any more—the new owners, it seems, definitely 'get' what the site could be, and are working towards it. For the first time in years, we're back above a million active users per month now. That's awesome.

LJ is competing with the big boys of blogging now. And it looks like it could be winning.

Comments

[matgb]

An enemy you can't respect is one you most certainly can't fear. Respect isn't a positive or negative term, it's more general: I respect an opponent that I acknowledge to be capable, if they didn't command respect they wouldn't be worth bothering with.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

Oh I don't know. I don't have much respect for the Discovery Institute. Doesn't mean I'm not scared of what they've been able to (temporarily) achieve. "Acknowledgement of ability to appal to the public" isn't quite the same either though.