Metrics

A recent leaked report from ComScore generated quite a few stories in the mainstream press about the rapid rise of MySpace, many with some passing reference to Yahoo's use of AJAX as a contributing factor to Yahoo's decline. And while MySpace has reason to celebrate it's incredible growth, their besting of Yahoo just illustrates how irrelevant page views are becoming. 

Yahoo, of course, must have known that their increased use of AJAX would have a detrimental effect on the number of pages viewed. But they did it anyway, probably because it made the site better for their users. Smart choice.

Why isn't MySpace doing the same thing?  I rarely venture onto MySpace's web site, but when I do, I'm confronted with an interface that looks like it belongs in 1999.  It's most active users seem to love to customize their pages with wild layouts, questionable color schemes, and loud music, yet MySpace provides them with only the most limited to tools to do so.  Instead, users are left with a collection of CSS hacks provided by third parties, which must be previewed and applied through form submissions (more page views).  Opportunities abound to make data available via RSS, yet it goes unused. Members can receive an email when they receive a new comment, but they must go to the MySpace site to read it.

So where is the in-place editing, the live previews, the RSS feeds, the full-text email notifications? It can't be that MySpace lacks the resources to add these features.  Don't they care about their users?  Or do they really care so much about being number 1 in page views?