I just saw the traffic numbers for MySpace on Read/WriteWeb and quite frankly, I find them astounding. (47.3 million members?!?) Who would have thought, a few years ago, that the secret to getting huge web traffic would be:
- Give teenagers generic profile webpages
- Let them mark them up to look like total shit (almost all of the pages I've seen on MySpace look like garbage)
- Profit!
I have to wonder though, at what point is the popularity of MySpace is going to become its own worst enemy. If there's one thing that teens can't stand, it's when everyone they know is in on the secret. I have to assume that, very soon, the time will come when a "cooler" site will jump in and sweep up a big chunk of that traffic, and MySpace will begin its slow but inevitable decline.