Prediction #1: MySpace

My recent ranting about Amazon Unbox has inspired me. I jumped into the Amazon Unbox experiment with the best intentions genuinely hoping that they'd have a better offering than what I was getting with iTunes Music Store, but I left predicting that it wouldn't work in the current marketplace. I hadn't read any opinion about it but it appears that Unbox may be getting a cold shoulder. Especially in light of Apples recent announcments of improvements to iTunes Music Store and the upcoming iTV.

So since I'm feeling particularly prophetic I've decided that I'm going to start making public predictions and cataloging them here. I give you prediction #1.

MySpace will fail within the next two years; just like Friendster and Orkut, etc.

I was reading this article by Dare Obasanjo and it all came together for me. If they only focused inward on what they've seemed to capture mindshare with (which I think is crappy home pages that help teenagers find dates, that and band home pages) I still think they would fail when teenagers get bored of the site or when social networking gets integrated into the next Motorola phone (hey maybe that's a prediction too ;). But then if they start trying to build a better Flickr, and a better YouTube and a better mousetrap, they're sure to do a mediocre job at everything. I like what David Heinemeier Hansson says "Don't build a half-assed product... Build half the product." So there! May you rest in peace MySpace.