Andrew Chen Archives

Subscribe · Featured · Recent · The Cold Start Problem šŸ“˜
Dear readers, I have moved to Substack and I will be writing here from now on:
šŸ‘‰ andrewchen.substack.com
In the meantime, I will leave andrewchen.com up for posterity. Enjoy!

Quora: How did MySpace, with a smart team of people, do such a bad UI/UX job with the new design?

I wrote this on Quora a while back, but forgot to cross-pollinate it on my blog, so apologies if you’re seeing this twice. As those who have been following this blog know, I had a great deal of respect for MySpace back in the early days and worked with the initial team back when the site was just a few million members- I’ve written about it here and here.

Anyway, here’s the question…

How did MySpace, with a smart team of people, do such aĀ bad UI/UX job with the new design?

The answer’s simple:
In the new redesign, MySpace prioritized short-term monetization ahead of user experience due to its failing business fundamentals.

First off- let me state that I think the new MySpace is actually better than the old one. However the new MySpace is still not good enough, obviously, to turn around the product.

I recently spoke to an interaction designer who worked on the new MySpace, who told me an anecdote that blew my mind:

When the team was working on the new feed at the heart of MySpace, the interaction designers wanted to make bigger images so that it’d be easy to see what users’ friends were doing. Similarly, they wanted to make the feed more easily scannable and have more content per page on the feed. Basically, to turn the feed into a modern implementation the way Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and many others have set up.

However, they were aware that if they did this, then users would be less likely to click through to the images and thus would decrease pageviews. Given MySpace’s declining revenues, the interaction designers there were asked to actively design with the goal of more pageviews. So they added smaller images than they thought optimal, and fewer images per page than they thought optimal, just so that they could generate more pageviews. Basically they were now designing a worse newsfeed to generate short-term revenue.

As I understand, this happened systematically within the product which led to many compromises in the user experience, and the business needs won every time.

When the folks who ought to be the strongest user advocates at the company design for the business goals as a priority, you do not end up with an inspired product experience.

You have to prioritize having a great product experience to end up with a great product experience- it doesn’t happen by accident.

Anyway, the site is still huge and influential in many ways, so let’s hope the team there figures it out and there’s a resurgence in the future.

[ed: I also wanted to add the following answer from Sizhao Zao Yang, co-founder of myminilife, which created Farmville and then was acquired by Zynga]

Sizhao’s additional commentary on this question:

In addition toĀ Andrew Chen‘s comment, I want to emphasize MySpace’s short term perspective seeped into product/engineering such that managementĀ actually believed that MySpace was special because peopleĀ liked to generate pageviews.

MySpace invited a number of the application developers to MySpace last year including Zynga, and I was the Zynga representative. During the sessions, they asked for specific suggestions on product. I told them to make it feed based: increase the size of the pictures, have more descriptions on the activity, etc. Have different ways to surface social content with counters/toasters, and make social feedback very easy with one click functionality. Multiple general managers and product people at MySpace told me thatĀ MySpace people just like to click more. I told them that they were on “the wrong side of history.” Little did I know that this session was broadcast to all of MySpace. So, overall, my comments to the management/product ppl/everyone didn’t resonate at all, and most of it was never incorporated in the MySpace 2.0 launch. They said my comments were “interesting, but we’ll see,” with an underlying mood/attitude that I was wrong about the pageviews generating MySpace crowd.

I remember also that when FB was on the rise, MySpace execs would publicly say they were: cooler, more about self expression, celebrities, and that the newsfeed/app platform didn’t matter (in the early days) because it was too geeky. They didn’t know what was going on and positioned MySpace as brand and used lifestyle marketing to promote MySpace. Ultimately, you can probably blame the non- product focused culture, or you can blame the completely wrong judgment/perspective. They just didn’t get it. In b-school/MBA talk, these wereĀ strategic/product mistakes and a focus on theĀ wrong metrics.

Unfortunately, when a company is in a downward spiral and think they are differentiating by encouraging pageviews, there’s not a lot you can do to help them. At the end of the day, you sometimes either get it or you don’t, unfortunately, MySpace went viral but didn’t understandĀ social, which is about retention, not customer acquisition, and FB completely out executed/maneuvered them.

PS. Get new updates/analysis on tech and startups

I write a high-quality, weekly newsletter covering what's happening in Silicon Valley, focused on startups, marketing, and mobile.

Views expressed in ā€œcontentā€ (including posts, podcasts, videos) linked on this website or posted in social media and other platforms (collectively, ā€œcontent distribution outletsā€) are my own and are not the views of AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (ā€œa16zā€) or its respective affiliates. AH Capital Management is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply any special skill or training. The posts are not directed to any investors or potential investors, and do not constitute an offer to sell -- or a solicitation of an offer to buy -- any securities, and may not be used or relied upon in evaluating the merits of any investment.

The content should not be construed as or relied upon in any manner as investment, legal, tax, or other advice. You should consult your own advisers as to legal, business, tax, and other related matters concerning any investment. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Any charts provided here are for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, I have not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. The content speaks only as of the date indicated.

Under no circumstances should any posts or other information provided on this website -- or on associated content distribution outlets -- be construed as an offer soliciting the purchase or sale of any security or interest in any pooled investment vehicle sponsored, discussed, or mentioned by a16z personnel. Nor should it be construed as an offer to provide investment advisory services; an offer to invest in an a16z-managed pooled investment vehicle will be made separately and only by means of the confidential offering documents of the specific pooled investment vehicles -- which should be read in their entirety, and only to those who, among other requirements, meet certain qualifications under federal securities laws. Such investors, defined as accredited investors and qualified purchasers, are generally deemed capable of evaluating the merits and risks of prospective investments and financial matters. There can be no assurances that a16zā€™s investment objectives will be achieved or investment strategies will be successful. Any investment in a vehicle managed by a16z involves a high degree of risk including the risk that the entire amount invested is lost. Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by a16z is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Excluded from this list are investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets.Ā Past results of Andreessen Horowitzā€™s investments, pooled investment vehicles, or investment strategies are not necessarily indicative of future results. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.