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May 24, 2006

My Pick List adds Myspace Widget

Michael Arrington

21 comments »

MyPickList is a new service that launched earlier this month. It allows users to create a list of items they would recommend to others, linked to merchants that sell those items. I wrote about it pre-launch here. They are creating tools to easily create the lists and publish them on websites. My Pick List has affiliate relationships with the merchants (current list is here), and gives publishers a cut of any sales that occur from the list. It’s similar to Yahoo’s Shoposphere, although Yahoo does not yet share any revenues with the publisher.

For publishers, it’s an easy way to promote things that they recommend and earn affilite fees without having a direct relationship with the merchant. My Pick List keeps about 60% of the revenue, though, which in my opinion is too much and needs to come down over time.

The site could use a few evolutions on design, but they are rolling out new functionality regularly. They have just released a quick widget creation tool for Myspace users, shown in the screen shot. If My Pick List can find a way to get through to these users virally or through a partnership, something like this could potentially become quite popular.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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    May 24th, 2006 at 6:37 pm

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  3. BiZwiKi.CN - 喧闹 PK 噪音 » Blog Archive » links for 2006-05-26

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  4. TechCrunch » Blog Archive » Rojo Launches Nooz for Myspace

    June 4th, 2006 at 11:47 pm

  5. amperspective.net » Widget Marketing is HeatingUp

    June 26th, 2006 at 12:17 am

  6. Social Intelligence - Social Networking Market Research and Analysis » Blog Archive » MyPickList - make money when people buy your suggestions

    July 13th, 2006 at 4:39 pm

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Comments

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  1. Saleel

    May 24th, 2006 at 3:53 pm

    Frankly Mr. Arrington,

    I am gettting tired of all these comanies targeting this demographic of people, the myspace beast as Mr. Cashmore refers to it. Yes its profitable I am sure, but what happens in 10-20 years when myspace dies out/ loses popularity? Shouldnt, before feeding the myspace beast, the individual service be strong enough, popular enough, rich enough, to standalone? A month? c’mon…

    Also on a minor note, with so many people targeting Myspace, doesnt oversaturation (different buisnesses, offering pretty much the same services) present problems?

  2. Michael Arrington

    May 24th, 2006 at 4:07 pm

    Hi Saleel, it is absolutely your right to get tired of this stuff. I agree, oversaturation is a real problem.

    However, I do like the core My Pick List idea a lot, as it allows the widget to be placed on any web site, certainly not just myspace. Frankly, if they had a better design, I think more people would take notice. If I were them, I’d also aggresively cut margins to give the lion’s share to the publisher, too.

  3. powerpop

    May 24th, 2006 at 4:30 pm

    Can they actually offer this service on MySpace. I thought their TOS did not allow advertising or merchandizing with embedded widgets?

    Saleel, its not oversaturation, MySpace has become a platform to launch and advertise other related services. Its like saying “shouldnt a service be strong enough on its own without advertising it?”

  4. Startups.in

    May 24th, 2006 at 5:39 pm

    A web2.0 version of PPS marketing? How good are the cookies or do they use some other kind of referral tracking?

    Regardsm
    NagB /at/
    Startups.in

  5. Said

    May 24th, 2006 at 8:45 pm

    All these businesses offering add ins (ie. widgets) for social communities is a testament to how large the Social Networking industry has become. The dating industry has plenty of such services: professional photo services, photo cropping tools, personal ad makeovers, etc. — let’s celebrate the blossoming of Social Networking communities for the opportunities it provides entrepreneurs to launch complementary businesses while simulateneoulsy seeking to add value for the members who fuel their growth.

    Shine,
    -Said

  6. Kevin Burton

    May 25th, 2006 at 4:06 am

    A few years back I went to the Eldred trial at the US Supreme Court in DC….. I was pretty broke at the time but I put managed to put together enough cash for the plane ticket but not enough for the hotel.

    I think I was in the process of launching Newsmonster at the time and was operating on startup funds.

    A bunch of EFFers decided it was just better to just camp outside the courthouse overnight so that we could get the BEST seats the next day.

    Apparently this happens all the time - so often that the washington police send a patrol car to stay with the campers overnight so that there arent any fights (think Roe vs Wade but at 2AM).

    Anyway……

    The next morning comes around and they open up the court and I get ticket #5… w00t.

    It turns out we have 15 minutes to kill so we run over to a Starbucks nearby and a gentleman behind overhears and finds out that I have ticket #5…

    He says… “How much do you want for that ticket?” and I say “what?”

    He says he’s serious so I say…… “$500″.

    And he says… not a problem. Lets to go an ATM.

    My next though is….. who does this guy work for?……

    So I say ……..”who do you work for” and he says “I’m a lawyer for the RIAA” …

    At which point I literally told him to go %%#@$# himself :)

    Good times!

  7. Pete Cashmore

    May 25th, 2006 at 6:40 am

    Saleel,

    It doesn’t matter if MySpace dies out, since the widget model is much bigger than that - think of it as APIs for ordinary people. Social networks, blogs and personal pages are here to stay, no matter what form they take.

    Powerpop,

    Yes - that’s a great point. We don’t have an answer yet. MySpacers are already “advertising” by promoting their favorite brands and music on their MySpace pages. It’ll be interesting to see where the line is drawn.

  8. Dion

    May 25th, 2006 at 9:19 am

    I think these complimentary tools and application will only help fuel the growth of customizable community sites like Myspace. Many Myspacers frequently get board with having the same layouts/features as everyone else and look for different ways to differentiate their pages. New applications and widgets will give Myspace users more reasons to keep logging on.

  9. dane

    May 25th, 2006 at 11:33 am

    THis is very similar to http://www.nabbr.com !!

  10. Zenrob

    May 26th, 2006 at 5:07 am

    Part of what made MySpace so great versus Friendster was its openness towards customization. So News Corp. is in an interesting spot on whether to allow or disallow widgets on their site. If they shut down widgets, they raise the ire of their community who may scream bloody murder and censorship. If they sit idly by while widgets are propagated on their site, they lose possible revenue from disintermediation with these 3rd party widget providers.

    My guess is that News Corp will continue to follow their present strategy – allow most 3rd party widgets to propagate on their network, monitor which ones gain the most traction, and roll out a MySpace version of the service shortly thereafter. Now will this mean that they create their own MyPickList service? I am betting yes, as I can’t see MySpace giving up social commerce to a 3rd party vendor without a fight.

    http://zenrob.typepad.com/zenr.....s_on_.html

  11. Ifmyspace

    August 7th, 2006 at 10:20 pm

    I think myspace is great and I will love it forever!

  12. myspace

    November 13th, 2006 at 2:05 am

    Great article on online community social networking sites. There are so many social networking sites out there like myspace the facebook tagworld etc it will be interesting to see if the new myspace social network site http://www.FriendsHere.com that is coming out january 1st will be just as big as the orginal myspace.com site.

  13. online community

    December 30th, 2006 at 4:00 am

    I use myspace and http://www.friendlot.com the most i noticed you didn’t mention them but with there different features and the people itself on the site make it a unique social networking site.

  14. Jeremiah

    February 28th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    I wonder if my own pet social networking sites http://www.TheBookForYourFace.com and http://www.HunkaJunk.com will be precisely as big as MySpace or if they will be way bigger. I would guess bigger since they are important enough to be discussed on TechCrunch, here.

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