The Confusing Popularity of MySpace

OK, lets get it out of the way. MySpace is huge, MySpace is popular, and MySpace is a word in common usage (hereafter referred to as myspace because typing those two capital letters is winding me up)

I bumped into someone recently, and I guess she knew how much I loved mobile phones, because she didnt ask for my phone number, she wanted my "myspace". Much as I wouldve loved to oblige, she obviously was not aware of how much I dont "get" myspace.

Long-winded explanation follows.

Many Many moons ago, yea, Al Gore he made the net, and it was good, the pipes were flowing, and then they made geocities.com. And it was good. And the people they flocked and opened up pages using the geocities page wizard, and suddenly everybody had a presence. I would wager that this almost kick-started the "homepage" phenomenon.

Goecities was where everybody (initially) planted their first internet seed, you didnt NEED to know html as they had a site-designer. you could have geocities.com/mynutsandI for no fee whatsoever. If fate hadnt conspired otherwise, the lady in question shouldve asked me for my geocities address.

So, I have now drawn a parallel between myspace and geocities, and I belive they are (were?) very much the same thing.
But some difference in implementation exist.
#1) myspace is made out to be cool, glamorous and beautiful people go there to write about themselves (actually, they pay others to write for them, and probably wouldnt recognise their own page layout if they had to pick from 10 samples)
#2) with myspace you can message each other (status: horribly broken I have been told)

So, where did geocities go wrong? My opinion is probably it was too early. The critical mass of users who would find this service handy hadnt bought computers yet, and once they had myspace was there to give them something they needed.
And the html (or whatever myspace uses) which they provide to users is so ugly that it is almost a comptetition to see who can get a page that doesnt flash black and white @ 10hz with links that shoot left by 10pixels when you hover over them.

They have taken geocities, and made it into web2.0. Launched an almost broken product and harnessed the users to make it work, deftly side-stepping the "large corporate" attitude many sites have, branding myspace as "cutesy and cuddly" at the same time, and sticking good looking woman there. And if you want to see their profiles, you have to sign up too.

All in all, a job well done. Take something that exists already (geocities) and relaunch it. Yeah, you can tell how impressed I am.

Needless to say, I'm not on myspace. And you are not getting my geocities address:-)