[fizixer]

MySpace was massive when Facebook was a year or two old. I had accounts on both and MySpace looked way more attractive compared to FB (it had the feel of Instagram).

So no, FB did not take over overnight. And even a few years into FB, no one (yes, no one) knew that FB will go past MySpace and there will simply be no comparison between the two 10 or 15 years down the road.

When FB took over MySpace a full FOUR years in [0], investors knew FB had momentum, but no one (yes, no one) had any idea why.

Not only that, many investors had no second thoughts about MySpace, and it felt like a competition space, instead of a winner take all. There was still an opinion that MySpace will retake the top spot again 'any minute now.'

So why FB took over MySpace? We don't know. Yes, we don't know in 2020, 16 years later.

(I'm not dismissing hard work, marketing, execution, commitment. But it was there for both FB and MySpace. It's a pre-requisite. You think MySpace folks slacked off and that's why FB got ahead? think again).

Stop monday morning quarter backing.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=when+did+facebook+overtake+m...

[hn_throwaway_99]

I wish I could downvote you, but as a direct reply I'll have to settle for replying instead. You seem to have completely misunderstood my argument. I'm not "Monday morning quarterbacking", and I in no way think that Facebook's success was guaranteed.

The point I was making was the idea that it was believed early on that social media was a "toy" or that it would never be profitable or that people poo poo-ed the idea of Facebook in its early days is not accurate, at all. Indeed, the example of MySpace shows that it was already well known that there would be a scramble for dominance in the social media realm.

> So why FB took over MySpace? We don't know. Yes, we don't know in 2020, 16 years later.

Uhh, I think we have a pretty good idea. First and foremost, Facebook was always focused on your real, offline identity, which was rather new at the time. MySpace and the early social networks were primarily based on different online personas (e.g. online usernames, no real name policy, etc.) MySpace tried to get people to add their real names and identities later, but it was basically too late by then. This isn't hypothetical, either, one of the founders of MySpace told me as much in a conversation about a decade ago.

[fizixer]

I just want to point out one thing, for the record.

I'm sorry "Stop Monday Morning Quarterbacking (MMQ)" isn't directed at you per se, but the general direction of whoever is reading my comment.

MMQ is, unfortunately, practiced widely in many prediction/retrospection circles like startups, finance, economics, politics.

I'm speaking from a the point of view of scientific rigor, or at least quantitative data analysis. No one does that when it comes to opining about the cause-and-effect of an event in the past. If you're "the winner", anything you say about why you won, would be taken as gospel. "Winner is always right". Rigorous analysis is very hard, and costly, and to what end? Just so you could say "my reasoning is based on analysis"? That's a very boring thing to say. Unless rigorous-analysis finds utility in applications like decision-making for future startups, and is shown to work over and over again (maybe we'll need AI for that), no one is going to bother with it.

[cortesoft]

You must have had a very different experience if you think 'MySpace looked way more attractive compared to FB'.... MySpace pages were ugly as hell, with tiled backgrounds, autoplay music, and mismatched themes. Facebook was CLEAN, and everyone's page looked uniform and consistently styled. This lack of customization, I think, is what made it become so popular. That, and the feed; myspace never had the concept of taking posts from all your friends and putting them into a list that you could scroll through. You had to visit each page to see what was on it, and that meant seeing the horrible styling and autoplay music.

[conductr]

I attribute the success more to creating a tight and more complete personal network due to the campus focus early on. I do think the features of MySpace were a novelty that was also wearing off. And fb provided a cleaner bug free interface

[sjg007]

That helped but FB was exclusive to universities at first. So everyone wanted in.

[garry]

Hm, I think it's pretty well known why Facebook won. Far deeper networks, far better engagement. Look up the work the Facebook Growth team did.