Myspace's Timeline, The Gartner Hype Cycle, and The Future of Education

2003 : Innovation Trigger
Myspace was first launched in 2003 by Tom Anderson (You remember him right? Your first friend there?) and Chris DeWolfe, and was originally used by musicians to promote their music and it helped them to collaborate and become exposed to upcoming and existing artists.





2005-2007: Peak of Inflated Expectations
Myspace became very popular among teens and young adults to socialize amongst one another. This was when it became "cool" to have an online presence for my fellow pre-teens and me.



2008-2010: Trough of Disillusionment
This service was considered obsolete to my age demographic when Facebook, the "new trendy thing", began allowing younger users and implemented the concept of a News Feed, something Myspace failed to come up with before this time. There also became some backlash to Myspace's snazzy HTML when new social media sites, like Facebook, had cleaner, more simple looks.



2011: Slope of Enlightenment
Myspace seemed practically abandoned and forgotten when it was jointly purchased by Specific Media LLC and Justin Timberlake to be re-branded and re-focused on its initial demographic, musicians and music lovers. Myspace has now been re-built, and many features have been changed. For instance, blogs and custom HTML are no longer supported, but a News Feed for popular internet music and videos has now been incorporated.




20??: Plateau of Productivity
Myspace still has a long way to go before it is a valued site and resource for musicians. There are a lot of bugs in the navigation of the site, and it is still crowded with unused profiles that no longer hold value to the site. Do musicians use this site as regularly as they could? Is there a better alternative? Do people still think of Myspace at all? I guess we will have to wait and see.

Education and Myspace
Education is something that could do good things with the framework Myspace has built out, even though it is not currently used for this purpose. There could be a great way to teach people about old and new music through the site, as well as teach people new things about music: how to learn to play, how to get resources or inspiration for those looking to write, how to get in contact with potentially helpful people in the industry. There is a fan-base, now it just needs the inspiration to get started in something like this.