Wednesday, May 03, 2006

MySpace as a click factory?

Guardian assistant editor and innovation guy Neil McIntosh (colleague of the Guardian‘s Bobbie Johnson, who will be presenting at our event on 21st June) links to Newsvine boss Mike Davidson’s research into and analysis of MySpace’s usability.

His verdict: it’s a click factory. The site could lose at least two-thirds of its page impressions - 30 billion a month to 10 billion - if it cleaned up its design.The rest of the post is an interesting, if somewhat speculative, discussion on whether or not that would be a Good Thing for MySpace to do. He seems to feel that it might be a good idea as, almost uniquely, Myspace is in a commercial position where taking such a huge page impression blow might not cost it money, and may even make it some more.

Neil concludes:

And if there’s anything you should believe in, it’s the fragility of that site. Just think Geocities, once worth much more than Myspace - $3.57 billion - but probably, at the time, much less a beneficiary (and thus potential victim) of teenage fashion.