My space was a little different, they simple faded into obscurity with the introduction with facebook and other social networks. Digg literally put a shotgun in their mouth and pulled the trigger!
MySpace was originally purchased for $580 million, followed by a 3 year advertising deal with Google for $900 million. As soon as this happened, MySpace began focusing it's efforts much more on revenue and much less on user-based advancements. By 2011, less than 6 years later, the owners of MySpace were having a difficult time selling it for $100 million. In fact, they failed to sell it at that price and ended up selling for $35 million 6 months later. That's a massive loss in such a short amount of time.
It's true that the demise of Digg happened much more quickly, and the similarity lies in the fact that both companies/websites began to prioritize ad revenue over user-base. In short, they got greedy. The fall of both these companies proved how incredibly volatile the economics of online investments can be, and as a web developer, how much power your user-base really does hold over you.
On that same note - MySpace
My space was a little different, they simple faded into obscurity with the introduction with facebook and other social networks. Digg literally put a shotgun in their mouth and pulled the trigger!
MySpace was originally purchased for $580 million, followed by a 3 year advertising deal with Google for $900 million. As soon as this happened, MySpace began focusing it's efforts much more on revenue and much less on user-based advancements. By 2011, less than 6 years later, the owners of MySpace were having a difficult time selling it for $100 million. In fact, they failed to sell it at that price and ended up selling for $35 million 6 months later. That's a massive loss in such a short amount of time.
It's true that the demise of Digg happened much more quickly, and the similarity lies in the fact that both companies/websites began to prioritize ad revenue over user-base. In short, they got greedy. The fall of both these companies proved how incredibly volatile the economics of online investments can be, and as a web developer, how much power your user-base really does hold over you.
Sources: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/content/11_27/b4235053917570.htm http://fortune.com/2011/06/28/myspaces-doom-was-in-its-dna/ http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jun/30/myspace-sold-35-million-news http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/30/how-myspace-fell-apart_n_887853.html