Will teen MySpacers leave?

About the MySpace phenomenon, many analysts say things like "it's a passing fad," "kids will move on," "or MySpace's parent-notification software will cause kids to leave in droves" (see this). I don't think so. Why? A number of reasons: 1) The site has something for just about everyone (all sorts of communications tools, page-design and self-expression tools, and communities, from location-based to interest-based). 2) Most MySpace users are there because of their friends – whole peer groups, not individuals, would have to decide to leave en masse. 3) Socializing in MySpace, like IM-ing, is just part of its users' (offline) social lives; 4) MySpace's sheer size keeps people there (it's like society mirrored for a growing, widening demographic - hard to leave if it's "all" there). "MySpace is a natural monopoly," according to a thoughtful commentary in TechNewsWorld, because the user's "cost" of leaving is too high. Certainly, when Mom or Dad gets involved, some kids go into stealth mode. They use privacy tools and create free accounts in other sites parents don't know about; but they don't leave MySpace. So a piece of parent-alert software released next summer won't have a noticeable effect on the parental engagement that has been growing since the first really scary media reports started early last year (law enforcement attention for well over a year). We can be sure that teen awareness of parent awareness has been growing too! I suspect the reason why Pew found that 66% of teen social networkers use privacy tools is because of parents more than because of fearing predators (see this on the Pew study). None of this is to say that other sites don't offer things teens value, including better features and tools, privacy, and niche communities, but they supplement rather than replace the incredible, though risky, flexibility and critical mass of MySpace.