Things Sure Are Quiet At MySpace News

Deadpool it

Hi Michael,

The link to the site is broken.

Sorry,

It’s only half broken.

It’s a relative link (you want to make it a direct link).

Same thing for nooz.com (which is also targeted at the myspace crowd).

Honestly I think this is just a matter of promotion. The MySpace crowd clearly doesn’t care about usability and will use whatever piece of garbage their friends are using.

All they have to do is point myspace users to it and if they get a 0.001% conversion rate they’ll be GOLDEN.

link fixed

This is irritating I know, but that’s the incorrect usage of ‘begs the question’. I only know because I have chronically misused it for years.

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/begs.html

It does make you wonder, but it does not beg the question.

This is the standard myspace m.o. - launch the site “silently” (without links from the primary myspace site), make sure all is well, then do a broader launch (links, promotion, etc.).

Case in point - Myspace karaoke (powered by the Ksolo acquisition). It has been launched and unlaunched silently a few times.

I could never get my site listed on there - perhaps others found the same issue.

Ok Kewtry, updated the text.

I don’t think MySpace users go to MySpace to read news, it is more a social get away from the dreary life I live kind of thing…..

Yea, they are simply targeting a demographic who isn’t necessarily interested in reading news type articles. Promotion might be a problem but it is by no means the only one.

Steve,
Howtosplitanatom.com

I agree with edward. Myspace users fall into a completely different demographic compared to the people who use Digg and other similar sites.

It looks very smart, perhaps they should make it look crappier

Tim,
http://bla.st/

Michael,

If YouTube, MySpace etc UGC sites have a profitable record, they might have gone IPO.

It happens to be that I have more than one profitable models for web2.0 (especially video) companies.

The first one is patent-pending. It solves the COPYRIGHT headache that YouTube etc are facing with.

Are you interested in knowing it?

Most of the members on myspace are kids anyway. What would they want to do with news?

One of my content-based blogs/podcasts has been included in MySpace News; we haven’t really seen anything significant yet in terms of traffic flow from their site. I’m also not sure what effect voting has on a story.

The best place on the web for news postings are TechCrunch and the Huffington Post.

It seemed only logical to add news to one of the largest media sites. User acceptance is a strange phonomenon - sometimes it works, sometimes not. Check out your gear.crunchboard.com - it’s another ghost town despite low price and seemingly needed service - no offence meant - it just happens.

Of course promotion and tighter integration with the rest of the services would help to a degree but you have to ask whether this is, in its current form, what the users asked for at myspace. I’m all in favor of hyperlocal citizen journalism. Topix is doing a really nice job in this space and newsvine is continuing to innovate. Myspace however is a different type of destination with different type of crowds. Enhancements to their service should start and end with socialnetworking and community in mind. Voting on news stories? Great but then what? How does that dovetail with the rest of the user activities at myspace? It’s a great platform to attract local advertisers when it works but you have to first answer what’s in it for the users? Why would they participate?

I don’t think the myspace audience goes there for news though. They still have a lot of catching up to do if they expect to take over other sites like redit or digg.

Even if it was advertised, I’m not sure much of the myspace crowd would actually want to read news… Since they are more interested with who is going out with who than what is happening in their country or the world.

I use myspace as a tool to find new bands worth listening to, then add them to my profile that does not resemble the average myspace page. I have retitled it as suggested listening and have tried to make it as little like mhspace as possible. I WOULD PROBABLY NEVER USE MYSPACE NEWS. I come to digg etc to get my news and might post it as a bulletin on myspace.

So it’s like digg but slower, more difficult to navigate and doesn’t allow you to post anything - only make suggestions through an obscure link at the bottom of the page.

Oh - and clicking any of the myriad of buttons at the top takes you away somewhere completely different.

Plus the titles are so vague - One such title is “More Suspensions Coming” which is almost as good as the item titled “Travels”

Can we skin the news site to make it look how we want? If not i’m not interested.

Thanks for reading my tweets, Mike. That’s pretty cool.

I don’t think that myspace appeals to the same audience as digg. It’s like trying to pass gun control laws through a republican dominated senate.

Of course Newscorp wants control of all markets, and even though they have control of the #1 money making web 2, that does not mean they can leverage that to dominate all markets.

I agree, the ease of use is almost, if not completely non-existant. But as Kevin Burton stated, all MySpace needs is to gety a small percentage of people using it, and a large chunk of the the MySpace population will jump on the bandwagon. I just going to to stick with Digg.

MySpace hasn’t linked to or promoted the service yet. So it’s remarkable there’s any traffic at all. From what I understand, the Newroo guys are still in testing.

Once MySpace starts linking and promoting, I imagine Newroo will start showing some serious numbers.

MySpace does this with every product.

They launch it, let people discover it, then they start slowly linking things up to it. The traffic goes from 0 to massive the second they do. If past history is any guide, I’d say 3-4 weeks from now they start to promote it. My bet is they’re waiting till they have some more features.

Like Kevin Burton said, if they get ever a small percentage of MySpace users talking, it will be the biggest social news site by far.

MySpace users can read? When the hell did this happen?

the reason why the site had to do a “soft launch” was because fox legal had not gotten any of the image content approved by the go-live date.

this was an unforeseen disaster, and they have all been paying for it.

it’s not so easy for a company that directly competes with reuters and AP to try to license photo content for the same stories, apparently.

the site was, sadly, entirely graphic-driven before this issue arose.

It probably crashes ever 15 mins just like the rest of myspace.

MySpace is just a toilet anyway.

Strange to see myspace trying to replicate a digg or newsvine type news column. what would seem more inline with their demographic, what with the celebs and indie music crowds, would be trying to replicate gossip rags and magazines in some way online.

even my news website is doing better.

who bought myspace again? funny.

Can a site enter the deadpool if it was never alive?

Most MySpace users aren’t interested in news, other than the vomit that is spewed from Perez Hilton or TMZ.

They should’ve invested their time and money into upgrading MS’s god awful infrastructure, instead.

What? MySpace crowd is not a fan of business and politics??

*Pun intended.

if they linked from front page / it would quadruple the traffic from TechCrunch ….

That being said - I’ll never visit.

- When your ads are of “Fart button” and “Good flirt?” - then don’t expect any credibility .. and credibility is “News”

If you read anything on myspace - it’s usually done at the “page your visiting”. let’s be real - myspace is more of a play area. Yes you can create a good friends list and do some marketing - but as a news source….it would be hard pressed. My question would be - even if they read articles - would they really vote on them?

Face it guys (and gals) - The myspace platform is for folks (if you are a guy) to get some pussy. Who will go there to get news?

Get real people.

I think it’s too early to judge. TechCrunch was useless when it first launched.