10 social media sites that failed

With so many social media sites out there, majority of netizens are still only using Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. This “social media fatigue” resulting from too many choices may be the reason why these social media sites that were once in the spotlight, have now died out.

1. iTunes Ping

Released in September 2010 and closed in September 2012, this social media site is a music-oriented social networking service that was developed by Apple. During its short lifespan, the site was plagued with many problems such as spam, fake accounts, limited availability and most detrimentally, the inability to reach an agreement with Facebook for an integration. Because Ping failed to gain much traction with users. The social network remained operational until iTunes 10.6.3.

2. Google+

In June 2012, it was reported that 30% of users who made a public post on Google+ never made a second one . Although there are already 500million registered users on the site, Todd Wasserman from Mashable reported that Google+ users are only spending 3.3 minutes monthly on Google+ which is a downward trend from 4.8 minutes in December and 5.1 minutes in November compared to Facebook users currently spending 7.5 hours using Facebook monthly.

3. del.icio.us

A social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks, del.icio.us failed to live up to expectations after an unfortunate and controversial acquisition by Yahoo! in 2005 despite its huge potentials. It gradually lost touch with online social behaviours and failed to attract users over time.

4. Eons

Targeted at baby boomers and Internet users over the age of 40, eons.com was created for people who wanted their own social networking “space” away from the others. In June 2012, the site shut down with its founder posting a message saying that their team is “working to resolve the business issues with [their] service provider.” He goes on to say that their providers were demanding financial commitments that cannot be made at this time.

5. Diaspora

Founded in 2010 and acquiring up to 375,000 users, Diaspora was created to solve a problem – that having a centralized social network was like “spying for free”. The founders believed that there is freedom in the cloud, and therefore,  constructed Diaspora as a network of nodes, hosted by many different individuals and institutions. Each node operates a copy of the Diaspora software acting as a personal web server. Users of the network can create an account on any server of their choice, but can interact with other users on all other servers. This allows it to be 100% owned and controlled by the users themselves.

6. Orkut

Most popular in countries such as Brazil and India, Orkut also suffered many series of unfortunate events. After being struck by a massive spam wave in 2005, Orkut’s new policy did not allow users to send out too many friend requests or comments during a certain time interval. Other social networks became better and faster, leaving Orkut behind.

7. Xanga

A website that hosts weblogs, photoblogs, and social networking profiles, Xanga in 1999 as a place to share book and music reviews. However, it gradually became inferior to other upcoming social networking sites such as MySpace and blogging platforms such as WordPress, Blogger and Twitter.

8. Digg

A social news website, Digg is a place whereby users can determine the popularity and visibility of web content by digging it or burying it. It is slowly being overshadowed by its competitors such as Reddit, Twitter and Facebook simply because users cannot share news as easily as compared to the other sites.

9. Friendster

Before Facebook, Friendster was notably the most popular social network in Asia. However, it has failed to compete against the entry of Facebook and has now turned into a social gaming network based out of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

10. MySpace

In June 2012, Myspace had 25 million unique U.S. visitors. However, it was quickly criticized for over-developing themselves as an advertising platform and not a social platform. Other criticisms included that Facebook was better because it allowed users to connect to real people, rather than bands or celebritiesز