Can we finally say it now: MySpace was a fad. Actually, more of a fad-wave.

When I think of the word "fad," I think of a timescale around six to nine months, i.e. the typical school year. The first fads that I encountered were Pogs and Magic Cards in Middle School, lasting a little less than one school year, usually being banned by month six or seven.

So when MySpace had a growth spurt that continued for years, starting in 2003, the constant debate about social networks was around whether MySpace was a fad or not.

Now that MySpace is finally declining in traffic, there was clearly something faddish about it:

But the reason MySpace so frequently dodged the "fad" label was because it was more like a fad-wave. A fad-wave is built on the cascading excitement that is renewed every time more of your friends catch onto the fad. So when you initially join MySpace, you have like an initial six-month excitement cycle. But by the time month three rolls around, a group of your friends join, and they start their own six-month cycles, further extending your cycle by an extra month perhaps. Then by month three of their cycles (your month six), a group of their friends join, which extends your friends' cycles a month (and your cycle by maybe another month). Until you find yourself hanging around for a year-and-a-half until everybody you know has finally gotten the MySpace bug out of their system. And then the technology reaches some stable state, half of what it was at its peak.

A fad-wave benefits tremendously when the fad has network effects, i.e. when a large part of the excitement is the growing excitement of group. MySpace was growing, and you were a part of that, and that just fueled it further.