Is MySpace's death spiral due to bets on Los Angeles and Microsoft?

No- I worked for a high-traffic .NET based company in LA that was doing great. Myspace just had a crappy product that couldn't keep up with the Facebook steamroller. I think it's as simple as that.

I think it has more to do with terrible design and a lot of bugs. How many pages had 3-4 videos all playing at once with sparkles stabbing you in the eye. When FaceBook came on the scene it was clean and stable.

When someone blames their failure on their technology, I'm always highly skeptical. Good developers and good management (equivalently: good strategy and good execution) could use Cobol and still beat super-advanced alien technology if it's being run by a pack of monkeys. I'm not going to comment on whether .NET is a good choice or not, but even if it was not as good as alternatives, I strongly doubt that MySpace would have beaten Facebook if only it were on a different platform.

The Microsoft "bet" seems to be working out for the StackExchange crew...

Of all the problems Myspace had those two are probably the least significant, if they're even problems at all.<p>Honestly, I never got the impression that there was much competition at all. Myspace was too early, made some design mistakes, and focused on the wrong initial market. Meanwhile Facebook focused on doing their own thing, which turned out to have way more potential, and zoomed by Myspace when social networking finally caught on. It just turned out that social isn't a space with many consolation prizes for second place.

As the age-old saying goes, "A poor workman always blames his tools." Where is the accountability? I would be much more interested in hearing some retrospect on what they did wrong.

The argument that you can't do something big and challenging unless the talent all lives in one small area is clearly refuted by the movie industry.

Brian Norgard, who started the thread, mentioned he "was in the belly of the beast due to the acquisition of my first company," which was Newroo.<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2006/03/14/fox-to-acquire-startup-newroo/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2006/03/14/fox-to-acquire-startup-newr...</a>

there's a troll in the conversation but interesting none the less.

Interesting conversation that could possibly takes hours to get to the bottom of. The MSFT bet was clearly a poor one at best.

Any MySpacers here that got laid off or looking to jump ship?<p>Well, I'm a developer at Leads360 in El Segundo, CA. And we're hiring developers right now! I've interviewed several MySpacers already and extended offers to a few. We hope to get more :)<p>Send me your resume, if interested. Good luck.<p>Bill Paetzke: bpaetzke@leads360.com