Help Me Imagine the MySpace of 2010

October 12, 2006 2:19 PM

I'm trying to imagine what MySpace looks like in 2010. Now, of course, it’s unlikely that MySpace will be what all the cool kids are talking about in 4 years, but you get the idea. Let’s call it MySpace2010.com. It’s the most popular social network of its day. How is it different from MySpace in 2006?

This is for an artistic project which, were it gloriously successful, wouldn’t net me much cash. So, I’m not asking you smart people so I can go build MySpace2010.com and net $1.65 billion in Google stock.

Today’s thought experiment: What does MySpace2010 look like to you? Are we still adding random strangers as ‘friends’? Are there any solutions to the stalker problem? What haven’t we even dreamed of?

posted by dbarefoot to computers & internet (15 comments total)

It will be accessed almost exclusively via mobile devices? GPS in such devices aggravates stalking issues? Mobile devices will be smarter, so updating your profile could happen automatically, friends could be added by in-person interaction (two cell phones communicate directly with one another like a handshake).
posted by CaptApollo at 2:26 PM on October 12, 2006

this question may have a high delete factor...
but my prediction is that MySpace will be a joke before that time. If it still exists it will be in a severly limited capacity. Online fashion will have moved on to something different, if bandwidth capacity is high enough I'd say something like much more real time video, or high quality interactive animated avitars
posted by edgeways at 2:27 PM on October 12, 2006

high quality interactive animated avatars

Sounds like SecondLife.
posted by mattbucher at 2:46 PM on October 12, 2006

I too was thinking SecondLife. But there's quite a steep learning curve there. Closer to CyWorld, maybe?

You could also argue for a social networking protocol, rather than a social networking site (think bastard child of an IM client and a web server), and for increasing fragmentation of sites into niche products (Over 50 Lesbians In California Space, Female Christian Teen Space, etc etc).
posted by Leon at 2:59 PM on October 12, 2006

I dig the concept of Myspace, but as a thirtysomething guy it doesn't click with me. I had a profile there for a little while, but I deleted it as I started feeling weirded out being surrounded by mostly teens and young socialites. The site that succeeds will be one that better segregates lifestyles and hobbies and attracts people based on its success in doing that. What we have right now is basically analogous to a town dumping everybody into the community center, rather than setting up activities and facilities and catering to the individual.
posted by zek at 3:07 PM on October 12, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

People! People! Has no one read E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops?
posted by ObeyScient at 3:14 PM on October 12, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

- pictures of flying cars
- alien personals
- organ donor auction area
- online art project seeking to cover the crater where North Korea used to reside
- virtual spouses
- cybernetic implant ads
- most popular MySpacer: "The Littlest Stripper", age 4
- Emperor Bush's MySpace page, with online execution appeal form
- nudity
posted by weirdoactor at 3:54 PM on October 12, 2006 [3 favorites has favorites]

We need to distinguish between "Myspace" and "ultimate social-networking site," since the two are not just different, but antithetical.

Myspace2010.com would be 98% highly-targeted ads that you were bound by blood oath (if not a brain implant) to watch.

An ultimate social-networking site—or more to the point service (I think it will act more like infrastructure than an application) would A) work on multiple devices, like cellphones. B) would have geographic features, to help you discover people in your area that you might want to get to know, or let you know when a friend is nearby. C) have an open API so that people can hack on it and come up with interesting mashups. D) Allow for fluidly defined (and perhaps spontaneously emergent) interest communities.

I think tribe.net is doing a much better job than myspace, albeit in an unsexy web 1.0 way.
posted by adamrice at 4:13 PM on October 12, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

if it still exists, one thing it will definitely have is categories for friends. it amazes me right now that i can't have a category for work friends, friends from high school, friends from college, friends who are hot girls i want to get with, etc..

it could use a lot more basic organizational structure than that, but this one would be a huge start.
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:42 PM on October 12, 2006

It will probably look something like this
posted by growabrain at 6:17 PM on October 12, 2006

Do you want to focus on the future of the social networking part, or the future of the band promotion part? Because musicians love the promotion aspect of the site, and that definately has merits, but it stands or falls with the social networking part of it.
If all the teenagers and complainers leave for better social networking sites before 2010, you'd be left with a network of just bands "friending" other bands, and creating a communication web of musicians interested in collaborating with each other, or learning from each other, but without their (non-musician-)fan interaction. That's my prediction. That, or it will be one of those advertising pages that replace all doomed websites.
posted by easternblot at 6:45 PM on October 12, 2006

Thank you, thank you, thank you to ObeyScient. I had never encountered that story before, and it is amazing. To think that the story was written in 1909 and accurately predicted the potential for isolation that the internet affords us....
posted by JDHarper at 7:22 PM on October 12, 2006

It will plug directly into your genitals.
posted by rifflesby at 11:39 PM on October 12, 2006 [2 favorites has favorites]

2nd adamrice. Next-gen social networking sites will be more tightly integrated with portable devices like cellphones. All the teens I meet age 15-20 have their cellphones friggin' attached to their hands, texting constantly. Now just imagine what they'll want/need in 4 years as they come out of college and start prowling bars and websites for hookups.
posted by junkbox at 5:51 AM on October 13, 2006

Thanks very much for everybody's contributions--just what I was looking for.
posted by dbarefoot at 9:34 AM on October 13, 2006