ByeSpace?

I can remember when I first signed-up for MySpace back in 2004. It was fun, a great way to meet people and check out bands and artists, but it soon became so overtly commercialized that it was disgusting. I rarely, if ever, check my page anymore and most of the people I associated with there have long since moved on to Facebook. And now, with MySpace's CEO leaving, one can but wonder how much longer the site can survive.

After signing on last April, Van Natta wisely acknowledged this change in how people were using MySpace — as a media site rather than as a social network — by doubling down on the ad-supported MySpace Music service. However, the company was not able to fix problems with the service including poor integration with existing band pages, which left many users confused or uninterested in the service.

According to an Ad Age source, Van Natta bailed on MySpace because he was frustrated by the company’s “slow pace of change” and “entrenched culture.” A dearth of fast, competent, loyal software engineers in the Los Angeles area reportedly slowed things down even further. MySpace is headquartered in Beverly Hills, in southern California. Facebook, which evolves its design and feature set so often that some users can’t keep up with the changes, is located in the more technology-oriented Palo Alto, California.

This may be the wrong way to look at this, but there seems to be a correlation between Murdock's NewsCorp purchasing MySpace and the sites decline. The very "tabloid" nature of much of MySpace's content only solidifies this theory, as NewsCorp is the parent company that owns Fox"News" and the NYPost - both very tabloid in how they approach their subject matter.

So here's the question - how much life is left in MySpace?