I was surprised when I heard the news of Steve Jobs’ death tonight and felt as if I’d heard a friend had died.
When I went to Apple’s site and saw the image below. I truly felt sad, and hit with emotion.
Steve, you’ve profoundly changed the world through your vision and creativity. And all along the way you’ve told us to do the same. And you’ve given us some tools to do it with and stories to inspire us.
Thank you. We’re gonna miss you.
UPDATE, 6/30/2011: I definitely posted too soon and without proper insight and research. This is a great example of how those of us across the Twitter and Blog worlds (note: I didn’t use anything ending in “osphere”) can see “news” come in from multiple reliable sources via Twitter and link out to other sites that seemingly confirm the information.
With so many blogs out there reporting on what is seen from various sources on the web, unfortunately it’s harder and harder to know who has what kind of credibility. I definitely have a reminder now that if some blogs cite an actual reliable source, that it would be prudent to see verification from that reliable source.
I apologize for jumping the gun and being another source to say that MySpace would be shutting down. Instead, MySpace was acquired by Specific Media for $35M and it’s been confirmed by reliable sources across the Internet.
What has yet to be seen, though, is whether MySpace lives through this in any capacity or whether this is just another step towards its demise.
After once being the most popular site on the Internet and arguably the social site that really kicked off the social site craze, MySpace will be shutting down on June 30, 2011.
Will anyone really care?
How long has it been since you visited MySpace and had any meaningful interaction with it? Besides the random link from some musician that still puts out music that is showcased there, I don’t see MySpace rearing its head anywhere except in news headlines predicting its demise or talking about its stagnant status.
So that does leave one demographic that I can see being impacted – even if only in a small way – but that is the artist/musician community.
There are still a tremendous number of musicians and bands out there who use MySpace as their primary platofrm for distributing full-length songs to the world. There’s also no other freely available resource that has been so widely adopted for this purpose. iTunes is fine, but 30-second clips of songs just aren’t as nice of a way to discover new music.
What will the replacement be? Where will musicians go to demo their goods? Is there something that already exists that can absorb the traffic and offer the features bands are looking for, or is this an opportunity for a new player to step in?
Just my take on this. Maybe I should log into my MySpace profile to see how neglected it is before they close it down. Just what was it that I put on that crappy site anyway…