I was about to write a nice post on communities and audience, after all I gathered some interesting opinions on Twitter last night. Worry not, that’s in the drafts.

But as I took a break I read Mike Arrington’s post regarding MySpace. Immediately I remembered Dick Brass’ article in the New York Times and I thought to myself: What the heck is MySpace and Microsoft doing? And Google for that matter. Are these fast becoming me too companies, simple runner-ups? Are Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Twitter the only companies driving innovation these days?

MySpace just pulled the plug on what was probably their last lifeline. Microsoft is eaten from the inside by personal rivalries. Google is constantly playing catch-up with little or no success. The first two are killing innovation and the last one seems it forgot where it all started from.

Do you know what the problem with these three is? Passion. The lack of it. When was the last time any of these three made you go wow? (other than the obvious that we take for granted)

When was the last time you felt that someone on the other end actually cared?

It’s quite sad to see them go down this road. Because I respect Google and Microsoft and I use their products & services every day. I can’t say the same for MySpace since (unfortunately) I find it obsolete.

Maybe these companies got too big too fast for their own good. But killing innovation and lacking passion at the same time is a murderous combination.

And that’s no excuse, because we rely on them and we need to feel good about them once again.