Not all countries are created equal when it comes to social networking, at least in terms of how valuable each user is to advertisers. In an onstage interview with Michael Arrington at TC50, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe confirmed this:
Our international strategy is different than our competitors. We look at advertising dollars, and 95% of all advertising revenues come form 9 countries.
In those countries, we have 30% more unique users than our closest competitor in those 9 countries. So that is really our strategy.
He didn’t name all nine countries, but they probably include the U.S., Japan, the UK, Germany, France, and Canada
MySpace is also embracing Google Gears beyond just messaging. DeWolfe announced a new Google Gears project in the works that will let members take their profiles offline. Currently, MySpace uses Google Gears to power its messaging application. A few minutes ago, DeWolfe explained on stage:
In terms of Google Gears, we are mostly using it with messaging. We are allowing you to take it down to your hard drive. Our next project with Google Gears is to do that with profiles. You will be able to archive it in a timeline, or create a scrapbook of all your profiles.
Something tells me we’ll be seeing more Google Gears projects coming out of MySpace.
Other topics covered in the 15-minute interview:
—On MySpace Music, which may be launching as early as next week (DeWolfe would only confirm that it will launch “this month”), Arrington notes that the CEO search for MySpace Music is taking longer than expected. He asked DeWolfe, “Are you prepared to launch without a CEO?”
DeWolfe responded that he and MySpace COO Amit Kapur are currently managing the business, which has been under development for the past four years and has 70 employees. He added:
We didn’t get a placement firm until a few weeks ago. We are launching no matter what this month.
—On his co-founder Lord Flathead’s hacker past, he and Arrington had the following back and forth:
DeWolfe:If you read it on TechCrunch, it must be true. I am not going to speak for Tom, but he has a lot more technical ability than people give him credit for.
Arrington: Was he a hacker in the 1980s?
DeWolfe: He was a technical guy
—On whether DeWolfe is dating Paris Hilton, DeWolfe parried:
I think the audience is more interested in your personal life than mine.
Any other questions?
Not in Germany. They are far behind StudiVZ, SchuelerVZ, MeinVZ, Wer-kennt-Wen, Lokalisten, Kwick and so on. In Germany, MySpace is 7th with a huge huge huge distance to the third place, not to mention first place, which is 10x bigger then myspace ger.
I am not surprise. The web is a global economy!
–
We’d also launched our startup today, check us out at http://www.adexcel.com
AdExcel is “The Ning for Advertising Networks with more juice in Socialized Ads”..
Let us know what u think
Best,
Darren
Cofounder of AdExcel
You’re doing it wrong!
Sorry Ted – will tone it down…
All the best and be jolly … More than 52 Startups launched today and many more in the DemoPit! .. Just wanted to take opportunity to launch “in conjunction” with TC50.. Really hope to see your patience and support.
Darren, do you realize that instead of posting this comment on every single TechCrunch post you will hardly get a review from them for spamming them and will hardly get anything from other bloggers either because you don’t try pitching them directly. Maybe it could be a good idea to use your time contacting bloggers about your startup directly?
Thanks Svetlana! I think that’s a really constructive idea…
Seriously if I could just login and manage these comments now.. I will rather just remove it. It was obviously a bad move and I apologize for it.
I will act upon your ideas right away!
Thanks again for your patience and support.
myspace will never be a serious small business social platform. it has growth issuses. ever hear someone say how they found there dentist on myspace. wont happen. this longtail is the meat and potatoes of future online ad dollars. no business professional wants to promote there business on myspace. where is the best social network for small business? this social arena is the most powerful and untapped.
even with open social portable profiles, no “professional or business” is gonna use there profile with a little myspace logo in the corner on other websites. my space is nice for entertainment not for getting work done. as users and small businesses mature they will migrate to places that best showcase there talents.
I am ready for them. Are they?
what are the 9 countries?
JAPAN ? this is the kind of thing someone say’s when they have dominance only in one market they want to shrink the world… DeWolfe might be a smart driven guy but certainly seems to miss out on huge markets due to what seems to be a lack of understanding which is sad…
regards
John Jones
http://www.johnjones.me.uk
He didn’t name the 9 countries because the interviewer wouldn’t let him talk…pretty annoying
My guess according to alexa is
Puerto Rico
United States
Australia
Malaysia
Austria
United Kingdom
It can’t be Australia as they have more than 500k less users than Facebook in this market. (who are number one at 3.2m)
It’s my understanding they are doing okay at monetising the audience they do have.
Did Chris speak at all about Myspace’s recent focus on creation of content? I think this is very interesting.
it almost certainly includes AU. even though the AU audience is kinda low in comparison to other markets, it’s the 3rd most valuable online audience (after the US & UK) in terms of ad spend.
^ ugh. I want to edit that comment. my data is bad ;( — was not the “total spend”.
AU isn’t 3rd, but still in top 5 or 6.
Why don’t name 9 countries?
Let me guess… Brazil, USA, Japan, Spain, Germany, France, India, Italy and UK.
I doubt if India is part of that 9 countries. Inspite of the population and increasing internet and broadband penetration, monetization from web has been very discouraging in India
True. Me from India. Primary internet access is through cyber cafes. There would be more than 100 cafe computers in a 1km radius. Its tough to estimate indian internet users just with broadband penetration. Orkut is dominant in India. They are not able monetize orkut coz users want to monetize with it. There are tons of referral links selling something. Or its full of celebrity wallpapers – Majority.
i would be more surprise if 9 countries didnt include usa
Darren Lee,
Are you spamming every single TechCrunch post today? Your quite on your way to getting your company, and yourself banned from TechCrunch.
Very valuable info.
Thanks Erick for your “guess” (can you back that guess a little bit more?
)
Except these country U.S., Japan, the UK, Germany, France, and Canada are also Malaysia, Indonesia and China. Those last three are now ’social networking’ addicted for promoting their stuffs.
i do know that one of the countries is Mexico
I do know it’s not the countries where Friendster is big. harhar
MySpace is the most popular social network on earth.
Darren, you are commenting on every post with link to your startup
Sounds good . Webmob-ad, is a new start-up that just came out . It is a pioneer in the automation of mobile and web advertsing by creating the only self serve and fully automated marketplace for CPC and CPM advertising . It supports all types text ads, banners and video ads.For publishers , it offers the highest split of earnings you can find out there and much more. It caters to web and mobile Publishers and Advertisers . Web and Mobile Publishers can earn money easier than ever and registering is FREE. Please check it out : http://www.webmob-ad.com. We would like to hear your comments , please drop us a line .
Germany and Japan? Are you kidding?
“95% of all advertising revenues come form 9 countries. In those countries, we have 30% more unique users than our closest competitor.”
Japan: no way as Mixi dominates
France: Skyblogs is the leader so far
China: MySpace is way behind local leaders such as QQ, Xiaonei, 51.com
Korea: nobody beats Cyworld there
Brazil: country of Orkut, isn’t it?
India: this should be Facebook turf
Russia: has its local champion as well
UK: Aren’t Bebo and Facebook doing better than MySpace there?
So my guess is that aside from the US, the other countries are neither world-leading economies nor emerging BRIC giants (Brazil, Russia, India, China).
In South-East Asia Friendster and Hi5 dominate and MySpace is likely not so strong there.
It is likely 90% of revenues come from the US, while the remaining 5% come from the other 8, among which could be Australia, New Zealand, Canada (English speaking countries).
i agree that erick’s guesses are off the mark, though india is more of an orkut town than a facebook one:
http://www.goog...clp=&cmpt=q
keep in mind that myspace only has a specific site for 26 countries:
* Brazil
* Canada
* Mexico
* United States
* Australia
* India
* Japan
* Korea
* New Zealand
* Austria
* Denmark
* Finland
* France
* Germany
* Ireland
* Italy
* Netherlands
* Norway
* Portugal
* Poland
* Russia
* Spain
* Sweden
* Switzerland
* Turkey
* UK
(source: myspace.com)
I guess this type of stats demonstrates a huge problem many web publishers and website owners have in monetizing all international visitors and maybe we should see some startups launched to address this particular issue in the near future.
Is this video hosted on ustream? I would really like to see the full interview similar to the Peter Thiel discussion.
Thanks for the great work this week, TechCrunch.
All of these comments on “what countries” and not a single one on the Google Gears announcement? No speculation on the possible uses of portable MySpace profiles?
tut tut
My guess on the 9 countries is simply the top 9 from Alexa (assuming Alexa data is fairly accurate, which is not always the case):
(1) United States69.2%
(2) United Kingdom3.6%
(3) Germany3.5%
(4) Italy2.3%
(5) Mexico2.2%
(6) France1.6%
(7) Australia1.6%
(8) Canada1.0%
(9) Japan1.0%
The rest of their top countries (see continuation of Alexa list below) don’t have online advertising markets that are anywhere near as mature in terms of CPM, CPC, etc. as the top 9 countries listed above. So while they definitely aren’t market leaders, or even the number 2 or 3 in many of these 9 countries, the ad markets there are mature enough that a 2nd tier player could still generate substantial revenues. Obviously though with 70% of traffic form the USA, it’s a HUGE gap from Myspace’s no.1 country, and all the rest.
Spain1.0%
China0.7%
Puerto Rico0.6%
Malaysia0.6%
Brazil0.5%
Russia0.5%
India0.5%
Greece0.5%
Austria0.5%
Poland0.4%
South Korea0.4%
Colombia0.3%
Netherlands0.3%
Indonesia0.3%
Turkey0.3%
Venezuela0.3%
Well, he will not mention the countries, it is their target, besides, the market has everyone tuned up on news, sometimes it is gossip, however, myspace is good in music, but at the same time, why be like a new music channel among the young people if you do not make the being interactive????
for the emerging countries besides china, like russia, brazil, India, probably others ones but theses one at least for now might be the countries!!
http://www.lagu...oi.blogspot.com
they do not share revenue so
Here’s an actual comparison of the top 11 Global Internet Ad Markets:
http://tinyurl.com/5lobco
Notebook Sale http://www.pcsuperstation.com
it’s good to know about this I like this idea but 9……. when we can know
web dav se que este es mi marido por eso no puedo ingresar al msn .porque el lo cambio a usa ,quiero respuestas dado que el me hace pasar de loka ,por todo lo que he encontrado ,asi como que dio pc ruter etc modem hasta me han quemado la pentium 4 mia ,asi tambien la de mi hija.hasta el correo de speedy com.ar no llegan mail y ahora que me di cuenta que yahoo y hotmail tambien,cosa que no se puede ingresar a cambiar ,compartida la pc..es un chanta cada vez que le descubro algo ,asi las fotos que trajo con una mujerzuela,esas son la que yo vi cuantas mas habra escondido en todos estos años de engaños ,yo sabia que algo habia desde 2001 ,pero aca estoy como siempre investigo y cuanto tengo para dar,en todos estos años aprendi mucho mas que si me hubiese enseñado,pero es una egoista y despues dice que primero es la flia.soy la sra.Todos somos bolinguis con el traductor al lado.
Why is MySpace is promoting infidelity?? and all for the price of the ad.
I was doing a little surfing on MySpace watching the gossip on
MySpace http://celebrity.myspace.com
Only to see under their
SPONSORED LINKS
WAS THIS
sponsored links
Date Married Woman
Married men & Women looking to have an affair!
http://www.flin...ater.com/dating
only to find porn!
Kind of like Judas for a bag of gold!!!! In addition, anyone can view this ad, even children. Our kids, your kids, their kids, I plan to call the Fox Media on this to complain. I do not want to come across as some prude or to tell people what to do. The advertisement that MySpace took money for did not come with a warning label or even a Tom warning label. It shows nude woman posing to find men some pictures are raw.
MySpace is really sending out mixed messages with this one shame on you MySpace we are to build families not rip them apart.