journalistic Dynamo

Los Angeles-- Social network website, MySpace, falls short in "arms race" among competitors.

As of January 23, there were reportedly 598,209,343 people currently holding accounts with MySpace, of which 321,914,002 were deemed "inactive," said MySpace media manager Greg Domo.

"This is the lowest rate of inactive accounts and new member turnout since MySpace's inception in 2003," he said. "We're literally in an arms race, and sad it's sad to say, but we're honestly losing."

The major contingent in MySpace's current slump was found to be the lack of simplicity offered from networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Avid social network user Aguinaldo Commonsworth said, "(MySpace) just doesn't cut it anymore."

Commonsworth, who has had an account with MySpace since 2003, argued that the reason why the website has been been lagging was due to the "over ambitiousness" of profile and homepage layouts and pointless amalgamation of features from Facebook and Twitter. "(Facebook and Twitter's) rise was so unprecedented because they offered services so basic. No hideously crowded coding, or an almost intrinsic need to use a pseudonym for a display name," he said.

"It's one thing to f--- around, haphazardly, with your homepages and profiles, but why would they have to incorporate things like status updates and other applications like a instant messaging toolbar?" It just makes them seem like biters," he said.

MySpace CEO Tom Anderson was not new to the blatancy of MySpace's abrupt unpopularity. "We're just doing what we can to keep afloat," he said.

"We thought that by adding these features, it would just a bigger incentive for people to keep an active account." Anderson said suddenly sobbingly, "It's kinda futile trying to grab new users... the most we can hope for is to do the best we can to keep our existing ones."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed disappointment in Anderson and MySpace personnel.

"This is really a new low (for them)," he said. "There was a friendly sense of competitive camaraderie between me and Tom at one point, then it just got bitter."

Legal action for copyright infringement has been filed by Zuckerberg, but there have been no further details released, nor has there been conformation of another lawsuit from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.



Dick Eshard
CNN