MySpace going the way of Friendster?

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MySpace tries to keep up its :-). Credit: Wes Baumsmith / Los Angeles Times.

Once a site that defined social networks, MySpace is now struggling to keep up with newcomers such as Twitter and Facebook. The News Corp. property said Tuesday that it would lay off 420 people, a third of its workforce, as its market share of U.S. audiences slipped and its advertising revenue is projected to fall.

The troubles at MySpace illustrate the brutal competition among social networks, where popularity can be as fleeting as trendy teen fashions. In a story in today’s Times, Charlene Li, an Internet analyst with Altimeter Group, said:

The speed with which a company like Facebook is able to innovate and keep things fresh is the key to survival in this space. There are new things like Twitter that come along. What does Facebook do? It does Twitter ... and it does it better.

That, ironically, was the painful lesson that social networking pioneer Friendster learned when MySpace came along.

-- Alex Pham