Chapter Three Media Article MySpace Is a Natural Monopoly

URL address: http: www.linuxinsider.com/story/must-read/55185.html

Summary:

This article talks about Myspace. Our economic teacher teaches us that the markets for goods or services are natural monopoly. Myspace is an example of it. Social networking, after all, is simply a peer-to-peer communication network. Users put information about themselves onto a Web page and then link it to pages made by acquaintances.The resulting online network duplicates offline social connections and facilitates communication between the parties. The end-result is simply a hyper-efficient enhancement to traditional word-of-mouth exchanges.Instead of getting together with friends and asking, "Has anybody heard how so-and-so is doing?" social networkers can simply trace the online connections until they find the person in question and learn the latest. Myspace has the largest social network and its value grows as the number of users increases. It also grows as the amount of information it holds increases. Social networks, unlike instant messaging, require a higher level of "investment" from users. They must not only create a list of "friends" but also spend time and energy providing information about themselves. Alternating between multiple social networking sites entails a greater cost than switching between instant messaging programs.

Relationship to chapter:

Natural monopoly is mentioned in this article. Myspace is a natural monopoly. If it was owned by more than one market than there would be a lot of competition between each markets. There would be a lot of people registering for accounts. This would lead to the network to be stuffed with people. Myspace is very famous among people. People might tell other people about Myspace so more people would register for it. Natural monopoly can be applied to natural monopoly. A lot of people around the world uses Myspace to blog about what they want to share to friends and others.

Personal Reflections:

In my own opinion, Myspace is a natural monopoly because there is only one company that owns myspace. If there were a lot of companies that own Myspace, there would be a lot of competition between the companies. The companies would have a lot of money made because of many people registering to Myspace. Myspace is really popular among people so there would be a lot of people registering for one.