Richard Rosenblatt was the Chairman of MySpace at the time that it and parent company Intermix were sold to News Corp. in 2005. He is currently the founder and CEO of Demand Media, a Los Angeles based social media company that has raised over $350 million in capital. We asked him to write a guest post giving advice to the new MySpace executive team. You can follow Richard on Twitter at twitter.com/demandrichard.
My Insider Perspective from the Outside
When Michael asked me to guest write this post, I hesitated because MySpace’s new management team is extremely capable and will determine their own path to restore the company to its glory days. But after fielding dozens of calls and hearing erroneous comments being attributed to me, I decided to weigh in with the hope of providing some general thoughts for the team to consider as they embark on their journey. I’ve never been a fan of armchair generals so I’ll refrain from giving specific operational advice – I am not in the trenches and haven’t been involved in the day-to-day operations for several years. We had our share of challenges, but in the end we prevailed, and I wish the same success for the new MySpace team – as well as all entrepreneurs entering the social media space.
Keeping past experiences in mind, here are some general thoughts on where MySpace can push forward:
Own the spaces that only MySpace can
MySpace is forever linked with the birth and meteoric growth of social networking – so the media, industry pundits and social media aficionados will always measure you against whatever the latest social networking companies are doing. Ignore the peanut gallery. Define yourself and your markets according to whom you truly are and where you can be successful; do not let them define you. MySpace is bigger than social networking.
The MySpace brand is global and occupies a powerful position in the mind of hundreds of millions of people. That power can be transported into other business areas – places where Facebook, Twitter or the next generation of players would struggle to take root. Only MySpace has deep ties and an inherent understanding of where entertainment and community intersect. Only MySpace is plugged into Hollywood from top to bottom.
Copycat strategies are rarely rewarded on the web. Witness the billions of dollars invested by industry titans in pursuit of what entrepreneurs built before them. Microsoft Search vs Google Search. Google Video versus YouTube. Yahoo360 versus MySpace. Don’t waste your time trying to “catch up” in areas that you aren’t currently leading. Build your lead in the areas you already dominate and define valuable new offshoots from that elevated market position. And bring back the entrepreneurial spirit that is so often lost in thousand person companies. Keep your corporate friends close, but keep your entrepreneurs even closer as you build a culture of “change” and taking “chances” in the organization and product.
Transform your unique UGC into marketable media
Over the last few years we’ve seen MySpace focus enormous energy on driving revenue through branded advertising in diverse and creative ways. We have also seen the addition of traditional media within the main areas of the Site. These efforts should be appreciated by everyone because prior to selling MySpace to News Corp., the conventional wisdom was that neither advertisers nor professional content providers would support a community made up of user generated content. In my opinion, News Corp. proved that this form of new media was a viable business and from that proof hundreds of social media companies were born. All that said, while these are valuable and important commercial programs, remember that you are serving an audience of millions of users each with their own talents and a predisposition to express themselves online through content creation. Every day, they’re piling into the site, uploading videos, posting photos, sharing original songs and publishing content that is often a great deal more than chatter. Take the same energy that is being put into monetization and reaching “professional” content producers to tap the power of the crowd and build a strategy for empowering your users to fuel a rich and valuable content component for your site. Start by curating the best of the community from the bottom up and make the MySpace experience all the more immersive. Each night the world tunes in to offline, curated social media in the form of American Idol, Britain’s Got Talent, and Project Runway. What brand is better positioned than MySpace to lead entertainment curation online? We have done this through Demand Studios and are profitably sourcing high quality socially published content for our network of properties and commercial partners. MySpace can do it with a focus on entertainment and related content categories.
Listen to the community and let them guide YOU
Now is probably a good time to revisit your community strategy. The hallmark of MySpace’s early success was being the definitive place online to hang out and have fun, allowing you to freely express yourself. The new team will need to recapture that communal energy that fueled MySpace’s once explosive growth. I remember Tom used to read and respond to nearly every single email and then built the user’s “needs and wants” into the product. That was a key learning from MySpace. And, as a result, every product at Demand Media comes from the wisdom and energy of the community, making it feel vibrant and alive. Metrics aside, you can truly “feel” whether a social network is alive or just a collection of people milling around.
Today, MySpace feels more like a loosely woven collection of millions of personal home pages than the vibrant community that we all know is there. More than providing widgets and the ability to “friend” places and things, let your users gather around topics, hobbies and their personal passions. Let them create their own sub-communities within MySpace and set yourself up to entrust an inner league of users to manage and moderate a fun, safe and fulfilling environment – enabling those gathering points to be focal parts of the experience.
In addition to developing the community experience from the bottom-up, it’s equally important to think top-down about its core meaning and purpose. If you do nothing else, define a clear vision for the essence of the MySpace community experience. At Demand Media we call this SOUL, and the continuous, organic growth of our owned and operated network of properties is predicated on it.
Finally – and this is the easiest advice to give but perhaps the hardest to follow – get internally focused. You have a new team at the top and thousands of people below you watching your every move. Who you spend your time with will speak louder than any words you can utter in a conference room or in an email. Are you glued to the users? To the product developers? To the ad sales team? To “the suits?” To the pundits? You have 100 days to set your course. The more time you spend away from “the glass” – the less likely you will be to get it right.
Great post. I agree MySpace feels like a collection of personal homepages and that leveraging the collective / community more overtly will pay off.
What about socializing 20 million untapped small businesses? Dewolf and Tom knew this is the longtail of social value: watch the video on my site. Myspac domain name will never cut the business mustard test. They need an outside domain name that blends with myspac but has a professional business agenda. Myspac will never be everything to everyone. Myspac is at a dead end when it comes to improving areas in which they are already strong. Time to look outside the box this one is full. The MyLocator MultiChannel Platform would be the perfect business channel network for Myspac/Newscorp to harness the social network power of 20 million small businesses.
TeamLocator.com – who you with.
Is this all you do here–whore your website as manna?
Get a job, don’t run a brothel.
It makes sense to very few and it’s more or less like the computer version of putting posters on the wall.
It might as well be Mars.
When I was in my late 20s karaoke was held EVERYWHERE. I had my choice of bars to visit six days a week. It was fun and I was popular beyond any measure I could have dreamed of. About five years ago the bottom started to drop out on the business here. I go back to some of the bars I sang in and one in particular that was always the bar of the younger set.
MARS. I could dig it but it was Mars. I don’t belong.
MySpace has always been Mars. It is also a has-been. Soon Mars will be dead like it’s namesake.
He should advise on raising funds. Anyone who is able to raise 350 million USD is a serious networker.
On the other hand noone needs to be raising 350 million USD to make a company a success. Thats just stupid money
http://www.yout...h?v=FJ64v9lUMO4
WHat has that link got to do with anything?
whatever. they’re clearly buying a ton of companies.
So was Bernard Madoff. Have you got a point? Some folks fart $350M after eating spicy food.
Raising capital means absolutely nothing. He has been though all these companies and You Tube sold for over 3X his MySpace. Dude, you aren’t very good in the business world, are you?
As I said somewhere around here, a capitalization hobo.
Great post, but I’d take some issue with the “Own the spaces that only MySpace can” paragraph.
Yes, it is plugged into Hollywood, but it is old news. Twitter has all the attention now, especially in Hollywood. Otherwise, Facebook has the attention, unless you’re a musician/band or comedian.
Can MySpace continue to succeed in this area? Maybe. Either way, the past 18 months have been met with no growth, no progress, and no vision. It might be too late, but I always commend people for making an earnest effort at it.
Either way, MySpace is profitable (huge achievement) and will be around for a loong time.
Well, anyone involved with developments of cracked.com is an expert to me. That site never fails to hit digg frontpage.
Great post!
Who new leadership spends time with is very telling of the direction your company is heading. This advice should be taken seriously by any new management team, especially one for a company past is prime.
Zach
blackboardconnect.com
What is up with all of the EVPs for a startup?
http://www.dema...ive-leadership/
Most of those EVPs were Presidents of their own companies until Demand Media acquired them.
Too many cooks…
MySpace had the chance to institute all of the feel-good community ownership and content dev ideas that Richard mentions, and I know they were at least proposed to the company within weeks of the News Corp. purchase. The fact is that it ignored the opportunities, instead opting for quicky ad tactics and other exploitative ways to monetize its users. Now, I should be so terribly dumb and unsuccessful as MySpace, so I just mention this as a message of caution when it comes to predicting (or expecting) future changes.
MySpace should stick to its original differentiator – Music. Build community around Music and grow outward.
BZ
I completely agree. MySpace is no longer a place for friends; Facebook has taken its place. They should continue to build around their strong presence in the entertainment industry. MySpace is the first place I visit to review bands, and many have their URL redirect to their Myspace Music page. That says a lot about their users and why people visit the site.
I have to agree with Jonathan’s point that MySpace’s focus on building ad revenues and other ways to monetize the user base caused them to lose focus on the community experience as a whole. I don’t think you can claim at this point that the vibrant community Richard claims to still be there even exists. I stopped using my MySpace account for the most part because i felt their was a distinct lack of community and much of the activity on the site today is that of spammers and businesses trying to exploit users. Also the large number of users and vast amount of content makes me even more skeptical that MySpace can create a strong sense of community because a real community requires some sense of intimacy and connectedness between its members. To change the current way people use and view MySpace from milling around to colonizing around passions or interests and interacting with other individuals would require a serious shift from the community of one focus that made MySpace so popular. The draw of self expression and promoting yourself to others is a significantly different experience that would require people to spend far less time updating their profiles or looking at other peoples and utilizing many of the features that go largely unused such as the forums or comments about the content. Also the promotion of applications seems to also contradict a community focus as people spend time interacting with games rather than people. At the end of the day the new leadership team has an incredible challenge ahead of them that would seem to be a difficult hill to climb, especially considering the now corporate feel that has turned off many of the very people who Richard wants to drive the new community feel.
My opinion: there’s not a damn thing myspace can do except rearrange the deck chairs.
Social networks are cyclical. Friendster was on fire, then their site became extremely slow and MySpace took over. MySpace looked unstoppable – all we heard was MySpace – but their site was cluttered with spam. Facebook had that answer with closed networks and now Facebook looks like an 800 lb gorilla. Facebook will be challenged by someone soon.
It’s a long, hard road, but it can be done. MySpace’s core was the music industry and they should go back to their roots and build again. Maybe even challenge Apple???
The rearrangement will come in the form of “Married On Myspace,” to start with.
I knew Myspace was doomed over 2 years ago. It is all about the API. If no one makes money off of you, you are doomed.
This applies to all businesses. Even successful ones.
40 million twitching perverts never even entered the picture then?
News Corp never exercised any control or input when they needed to. This was beyond strange for Rupert Murdoch.
MySpace is the biggest failure he’s had since his paper days. If that doesn’t sound like much, read up on him, it will sink in.
I think the new execs would do well to heed Richard’s perspective
I log into facebook everyday, and I still go to myspace about once a week, albeit more out of curiosity these days than direct intent
MySpace does have a huge opportunity, but they have to start taking more risks, iterate on their product much more quickly, and stop trying to compete with facebook as a place for friends, that battle is lost
MySpace has an the opportunity to become the premier web portal 2.0 – to take what Yahoo did in the late 90’s and take it to the next level by truely having user profiles/data seemlessly integrated
But to do this successfully this means Myspace will need to take some risks and be willing to lose some money in the short term. For example, there is no reason there needs to be a log-in screen as the first step of the MySpace expereince. Its a great cash cow for the company, but is another example of lack of itteration.
Take me to an intiall page that has items like “news my friends are reading”, “featured play lists of songs”, “popular videos”, “status updates”, events happening in my zip code this week – and let the users have total controll over customizing that page.
MySpace missed a big opportunity to build on the twitter craze, they came to the game late with status updates and facebook has copied and iterated on twitter better already.
If MySpace does want to play in the classic social networking space, they would do well to remember that we all want our 15 minutes of fame and an outlet to promote ourselves. Give your power users a platform for directed self promotion where other users see and hear their messages and they will bring the millions of other casual users back to MySpace community.
I’m fortunate to know Michael Jones their new COO. I couldn’t imagine a better pick for the job. He’s one of the few people I’ve ever met in the web space that’s both a rock start on the business/technical/product side. I don’t have confidence that most of us could turn that juggernaut around, but I do have faith in Mike.
shouldn’t you be worryin about how to save DocStoc from falling off the face of the earth?
you lost me at, “MySpace is bigger than social networking. ” the fact that this guy is still thinking this thing of ours in terms of “social networking” is probably 1 of the 2 reasons why myspace lost it’s place. the other being that people in charge actually believe any website is “bigger than social networking”.
it’s too late now to worry about the past though. they need to look at what they will have in the next few months and find ways to leverage this into more market share / site activity. poignantly – what can they offer that fb and twitter do not. I know bands have account on all 3 of these sites, but I think myspace’s best chance on survival is to focus primarily on bands. I won’t be specific on my ideas because, well, nothing’$ free.. but yeah, the average joe user is using facebook now.
also, perception/PR – myspace is laregly seen as the AOL of that type of service. for whatever it’s worth, this is good for getting the masses. but not good for attracting power users, or the “cool kids” and alpha nerds..
p.s. myspace, clean up your fucking advertising. I know there’s bills to pay and you can’t turn spammers down if they want to buy ad space. but protect your userbase from questionable ads.
sorry for the typos. I get really passionate and twitchy about this topic.
Myspace just started a few weeks ago cleaning up there ads.
There a lot better.
there’s a karaoke function on their a lot of myspace user’s don’t even know about. it’s really their own fault..
Good general advice, that you can apply to just about any community website. So, I guess my comment would be, “duh.” Tell me something I don’t know.
The original name of Pioneer Electronics Corp. meant ‘glory’ in Japanese and arose from the founder, Mr Matsumoto’s deep Christian faith. The original product, a speaker was called the Pioneer and the brand name of the company was born in 1938. In 1966 the Pioneer name was officially adopted as the corporate name.
The marking on the old brown speaker cones, FB, is from that original name.
Pioneer also abandoned the manufacture of phonographs years before others in favor of digital audio and video equipment.
How’s that?
> … let your users gather around topics, hobbies
> and their personal passions.
Like people did with your Me.TV “community” fiasco, Richard? People don’t do that on their own. You need paid professional community developers (not interns) to reach out to the best of breed in each category and enlist their participation. All UGC is not created equal. No one wants to hitch their wagon to a burned out star – or a “star” of burnouts.
agreed that MySpace is doomed which is why it was not a good idea for Owen to take the job. Frankly, not sure anyone can fix MySpace at this point. Mark my words that we will be having the same conversation about Facebook 3-4 years from now.
me thinks that Richard has his own junk show to deal with at Demand — a collection of yucky stuff.
Myspace will smolder like yahoo. No growth because facebook is taking over web 2.0. http://iamned.com/blog/ people need to stop complaining about recession and keep buying stocks
You mean food and Charmin, kid. Stocks taste like shit and don’t help like All-Bran.
I’m with Mike, they’re MyToast
If the owners thought you stunk once, what in the hell makes you think you have the right to explain anything to their hand-picked Cylon warriors?
Think it over. You’re a capitalization hobo, son.
Thanks so much for this article. None could be more tired of the media hype that somehow doesn’t recognize the different demographics MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter serve. There are a great number of people that don’t like graphics and ads and whatnot on their pages. Facebook suits this crowd. It’s clean, sparse and functional.
However some number of us enjoy customization, music, movies and videos and Facebook unless something changed that I don’t know about does not compete in this space at all. As noted Myspace has huge ties with Hollywood and those of us that are artist. If you doubt this, go to YouTube and you will see that most YouTube pages more than not mention MySpace with nary a mention of Facebook at all. Let’s not forget the age difference. Aside from artist, MySpace’s user base tends to be somewhat younger and as implied by the age are interested in self expression, webspaces that reflect their individuality, music, movies, videos and connecting with their idols. The disposable cash thrown around by this group reflects MySpace’s lead over Twitter and Facebook in actual read real revenue. When you think about all the promotion that takes place on MySpace an the freedom studios and talent have designing their space, how could Facebook even touch MySpace?
Twitter can does not despite media cheer leaders compete with Myspace or Facebook. Twitter is nothing more than visual caller id with a subject line. No more, no less. At the end of the date Twitter being the teaser, the hope is that you will find yourself on the actual Facebook or MySpace page at the end of the day, to consume the full content of which Twitter was the mere abbreviation.
Number of users don’t pay for services provided, especially when signup and use is free. Ads and REAL content do. The elephant in the room for Twitter and Facebook is the monetization of their business models. Facebook makes sense as a valid service, distinct from Myspace in functionality and demographics. Twitter is by far the least functional of its kind and its only differentiation is that it had the least features and was easiest to use. In a word ‘freakingscary’ if I’m trying to anticipate product ’stickiness’ for a seemingly indiscriminate crowd.
For those of you saying too many adds on Myspace, you need to be asking yourself how is Facebook paying the bills?
How do you spell myspace?? – F A I L U R E aka sinking ship. It is a has been. The music part of myspace is not even that great, and that is about the only thing it has going for itself.
damn all look hot
Well, the guy did ask.
MYSPACE is letting people go TODAY!!!