One thing that’s great about MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta – his emails to employees always have at least one good sound bite. In June the zinger was his reference to laid off employees as “bloat.” This time, he’s saying it like it is, again: “Our users don’t know if we’re a social portal, a music site, or an entertainment hub.”
Neither do we. MySpace always described itself as a social network until they weren’t the biggest social network any more. At various times since then they’ve called themselves a “premier lifestyle portal,” an “online community that lets you meet your friends’ friends” or just the largest “social portal” in the world that doesn’t begin with “F” and end in “book.”
Anyway, I assume Van Natta will have an answer to what exactly MySpace is at some point in the near future. He also says “In the last week, we’ve made some small but meaningful site changes that will lay the groundwork to provide more clarity on our brand and business” (all we’ve seen is a logo change, but there are likely other small changes).
Meanwhile, here’s his email to the troops, confirming our stories that Travis Katz is leaving and Mike Macadaan is joining, among other personnel changes.
From: Owen Van Natta
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009
To: FIM MySpace All
Subject: Organizational UpdateHi everyone,
As we continue to evolve our organization there are some changes I’d like to update everyone on.
After nearly two years of managing MySpace’s product organization, SVP of Product Tom Andrus has decided to explore other opportunities. During his tenure at MySpace, Tom brought a level of professionalism to the product organization and established a true discipline of product management. He helped create a dynamic, top notch team of product talent responsible for managing one of the biggest platforms on the planet. I personally appreciate all the support that Tom has given the new management team and look forward to welcoming new talent to compliment the tremendous group we currently have in place. We expect to see incredible things from Tom and wish him the best in his future plans.
After more than three years running MySpace’s international business, MD and SVP of International Travis Katz has decided to leave the company to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. Travis joined News Corp in 2004 and was one of the principal authors of the company’s digital strategy, which led to the creation of Fox Interactive Media and the acquisitions of MySpace and IGN among other sites. In February, 2006, Travis joined MySpace to lead the company’s international expansion, and under his leadership, MySpace grew its international user base from 12 million to more than 60 million active users. Travis leaves as a friend to MySpace and to the executive team – we wish him and his family the best of luck in future endeavors. Travis will remain with the company through the end of August to help with the transition.
International will continue to be a major priority for MySpace going forward and I’m proud to announce that Rebekah Horne – formerly our GM of Europe and Australia – will be taking over as MD and SVP of International. During her tenure at MySpace, Rebekah has done an incredible job inspiring and leading teams across Europe and the rest of the world. Rebekah spent last week in LA working with us on strategic planning and this week I plan to join her in London to meet with our leadership team in Europe. Please join me in congratulating Rebekah on her new role.
As I’ve said before, simplifying and unifying our site is fundamental to our success going forward. MySpace should feel like one platform – not 15 sites loosely stitched together. We consider our diverse content offering a strength but t oo many logos and disorganized verticals makes the site difficult to navigate and creates confusion about our brand identity. Our users don’t know if we’re a social portal, a music site, or an entertainment hub. In the last week, we’ve made some small but meaningful site changes that will lay the groundwork to provide more clarity on our brand and business. Unifying MySpace is critical to how we define ourselves to the world. We’re beginning to start this process and I’d like to introduce two major hires to the product organization.
Please join me in welcoming Katie Geminder, our new SVP of User Experience and Design. Katie began her career designing user experiences at Amazon, where she led large cross-functional and customer experience initiatives including the Amazon.com Kitchen Store, Target.com, and the Amazon Services e-Commerce platform. Since then she has worked for top online and technology companies including Apple and Facebook. For Katie, great user experience and design lives at the convergence of product, engineering, and design. A great user experience is dependent on two things, a clear and concise vision augmented by user feedback and the collaboration of business, product, technology, and engineering teams.
Improving our product interface is a major component of creating an exceptional user experience. With that, I’d like to welcome Mike Macadaan as our new VP of Product. Prior to joining MySpace, Mike served as Vice President of User Experience at the start-up publishing network Tsavo Media. Mike is a fixture in the start-up scene as the founder of Twiistup, an industry standard startup showcase. At AOL, Mike led the team responsible for creating Magnet, the company’s groundbreaking first effort at personalization and behavioral targeting, which gave AOL an in-depth look at the needs of their users. At MySpace Mike’s job is to push, inspire, and lead the product organization. He’ll be responsible for developing next gen experiences that will reset the growth for MySpace.
Finally, we’ve spent the last few weeks designing a framework that provides tremendous clarity to the way in which our product and technology teams will be working together moving forward. Next week, Jason and Mike are going to walk employees through the new team structure of our technology and product group. I appreciate the input from everyone across the company that has helped develop this architecture.
Thanks,
Owen
The site is exactly what it’s called. MySpace. Not sure what’s so confusing about that. Why complicate things.
MySpace can fill the hole of old facebook. Where we could customise profile using widgets.
The only way MySpace continues as a viable business is to focus on music. They’ve lost the social network game but they have a huge lead in music and every band in the world seems to have a MySpace page. Play to your strengths.
Right now they have the lead in music. However, as the “Fan” pages in Facebook get better set up for distributing music, I can see a lot of musicians jumping ship.
I think myspace is a good way for dating, especially for high schoolers, they can compete with Match.com
the fan pages are completely retarded. they offer no value whatsoever and the widgets stand out like a sore thumb on artist profiles because they can’t be customized like everything else. you can’t play music, you can’t buy music, you can’t buy merchandise or anything. retarded.
if that’s fb’s zinger of an answer to myspace music then we all need to do a big face-palm for them.
in any case, myspace is still completely viable in a number of ways. does your website still get 110 unique users every month? cause they do. that’s pretty far from “nothing” and “not viable”.
sure they’re not bigger than facebook anymore and much smaller than they used to be, but no one else is close to them or facebook. the fact also still remains that unlike facebook, they aren’t operating at a loss and nearly broke $1 billion last fiscal year in revenue. facebook came no where close to that despite all their growth.
things are looking grim, but it would be ignorant to count them out.
typo:
*does your website still get 110 million unique users every month?
Agree, does Linkedin make a large profit. Size doesn’t matter.
agree with everything robert said above. there’s too much chaos & reconstruction that would need to occur to make up for in their quest to be the #1 “social network.”
although there’s been a recent migration back to band websites, if you’re a band, you still MUST have a MySpace account.
Good point. They should just keep it simple and don’t offer too much choices in the perception of their platform. It just complicates things. The CEO should be just trained to refer MySpace as MySpace. Period.
- Darren at AdExcel dot Com
Also I meant to say “too many” choices.
Social networks depend on the users, the ones with the most of “your” friends are the ones that will succeed… so it’s only a race to the unprofitable end.
Name isn’t confusing but the brand (from its roots) is a mess.
Jon
Unprofitable end? What do you mean by that! Agreed that the whole brand is a mess. They have been through so many changes in MySpace that’s it’s hard to know what they stand for anymore!
I absolutely agree with you John, spot on!
They will die either way no doubt about that!
10 out of 10 users know its a social site.
10 out of 10 users know you can find music there.
10 out of 10 users know entertainment is there.
10 out of 10 users know its not the place to find a dentist or promote your small business.
I concur.
Michael,
Just post the “twitter business model” entry
Can’t keep checking techcrunch 10 time a minute anymore 
lol, I doubt TC will end up posting the business model documents or anything of that nature.
@Jiah +1
How dare you publish this email which clearly shows they are making all the right moves.
..and why not mention they hired Facebook’s former design director? Kinda seems like it might be interesting to note. I think MySpace did something to piss Arrington off, he is just beating the fuck out of them recently.
I agree. When all of mike’s buddies were in MySpace he was a fan boy. Of Late he is pissed with something, and is trashing MySpace big time. Anyways during both the periods Mike’s writings were on extremes and doesn’t reflect reality rather it was to please somebody as a favor or trash someday for a vendetta!
Yeah its pretty surprising how much TechCrunch obsesses over MySpace – Arrington and Dudecks fling must of ended on bad terms and this is how he takes out his frustration
It will be interesting to see what happens to facebook in tc when arrington zuckerberg fling ends !
How did you know about this? aggg check the url http://www.tech...ington20091.jpg
Sean,
Next time make sure to disclose that two of the people who are now leading MySpace are your former employers-Mike Jones and Mike Macadaan.
BTW, When are you going to join them at MySpace?
Give Mike Arrington’s ability to break a story, I’d imagine he would know before me.
it’s because the majority of all user prfiles are a mess of those three things (social stuff, music and entertainment + a lot of ugly colors and graphics)
Agreed! Allthough the new web2.0 profiles are certainly a big improvement.
Well, it’s called Profile 2.0, but… while I’ve upgraded, I find that just about everyone else I know hasn’t. Also, yes, I don’t understand the fascination people have with unreadble flashing profile pages.
All hail the glitter-gif bling.
Hahah! They better find themselves to be useful or they’ll be the next…do I dare say “friendster”
You do have a point. Let’s hope they have a game plan.
Your point is great. Thanks for tag teaming.
Myspace has a complete indentity crisis. Facebook and Twitter do social networking better and Youtube is the best know resource for videos. Myspace should stick to what they’re good at. Music. Listening to it, watching it, discovering it an sharing it.
See my post – Why Myspace is Still Awesome… http://su.pr/2zsMcw
What are u talking about? Twitter has an identity crisis too. Here’s the funny thing, you think it’s social networking? Other would say it’s microblogging. Yet others would say its a glorified RSS syndicator.
lol but what surprises me, the annual income of myspace is way more than Facebook…
Poor Mike….you get myspace emails a bit late these days !! what happened to your contacts ???
this actually sat unread in our inbox for nearly 24 hours while we battled the twits.
I think a documentary about TC operations with something like the Twitter information coming in would be a great piece to see.
Someone must have a camera and can get some footage for editing a good 1 hour docu.
Read John Doe’s comment at the very top, I and I am sure many more reading the comments have to agree!
Its about user generated content isnt it? So I will make MY SPACE what I want it to be!
Everything on MySpace seems slapped into place. Trying to do everything FB and Twitter does has hurt them. Seems like Tom is the only developer over there and the UI and methods you have to employ to update your profile is awful. However, I admit I’ve abandoned MySpace before the Web2.0 profiles. That should speak for itself. Still I believe competition is good and MySpace has it’s place.
hehe, definitely agree with john doe. That’s the reason I go with fb&twitter and no myspace: there’s enough mess in my physical universe, why mess up things on the online also! I prefer some “order” when online, not just putting things everywhere on the page…
That just sounds bad.
10 out of 10 users know the followng:
-know its a social portal
-know you can find music there.
-know entertainment is there.
-know myspace is not the place to find a dentist, promote your small business or build a personalized professional profile.
If users don’t know what they are then it would have to be because Myspace hasn’t made it clear. Concentrating on music wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Exactly what am I suppose to do in “MySpace”? At least in Facebook I “reconnect”?
MySpace has become a site for musicians, entertainers, and tweens/teens. That’s it. It has marginal experiential value to anyone over 25, or who works in professions outside of music and entertainment. Facebook came along and offered that experience.
MySpace watched and did nothing from a UX perspective for 2 years. MySpace has been lapped. MySpace will never close the gap – it’s the Sony Walkman in the iPod age.
They know what they are. It’s a social networking portal that caters to all audiences
Why can’t MySpace keep up with Facebook is the real question, because MySpace was around before “Face book”
Tom and Travis, good luck with your new projects!
MySpace should stop trying to make a “comeback” as the number one social network. That’s not how things are anymore. Find your niche and run with it. Stop being that dude at the table looking around at what everyone else ordered and wishing you could have a bite of that instead.
Same goes for Facebook.
yes.
MySpace has become musicians spamming other musicians.
Look at ICQ.com website 10 years ago with its 50 different apps (forums, pages, bulletin boards, etc.) and you will see myspace. And we know what happened with ICQ eventually.
The future of MySpace is not going to be that different. The company is going through a similar process like AOL and Yahoo – hire new management, pay them very well, let them bring their own people and get rid of the old crew, and in two years they will be gone looking for the next thing and MySpace will continue to be an undefined web property that is struggling to find it place.
change it to MyMusic – the only reason myspace is around is music.
Does anyone care anymore? Writing about MySpace is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The best thing it could do now, for those involved financially, would be to end quickly and mercifully.
finally a ceo in there that gets why its popular cause the dipshit who was there before was just copying facebook and that’s a losers play
Users know what MySpace is. That’s not the problem. MySpace is a place for many things, which in itself isn’t the real issue. The real problem actually is all of those things that are on myspace are done better on other sites.
They should run in the opposite direction of Facebook. Facebook wants to open the door? MySpace should turn around and emphasize how important it is to protect their users privacy.
Seems simple enough.
Myspace is the best place I found on the net to find music in styles that I like, discover tons of new bands and even listen to new styles. Right now Im into a Senegalese music trip and Im also into mestizo music like Manu Chao, La Chango Family, Sergent Garcia, etc.
I never use, check or modify my account. Actually, the only reason I have one is even though you can listen to music without being a member, you often cant access the videos and photo sections without one.
That said, Im not even sure if they’ve changed their options but NOT BEING ABLE to change the background and having to add code inthe About section is totally retarded.
Myspace is confused, they don’t know what they want and how they want it….
I’ve known this branding issue a while back. So bad all the myspace executives didn’t realize till today. I am a former myspacer, non executive, but with a keen business and entrepreneurial sense.
Myspace is lost in the Mix. They need to do something quick.
Well, for me Myspace has been a big breathing hole. Although there are other places to publish your demos, some better, some worse, Myspace still is the de facto ladder for people making music.
That said, I use it for nothing else. I don’t mingle, don’t socialize, don’t watch videos, and I have Spotify and last.fm for listening music. Which all means I’m pretty damn glad others use it for other means.
Nevermind the social aspects, as has been said some times, stick to the music Myspace, stick to it. Do it well and you’ll be happy forever after.
How about a teamwork with Spotify? Most often played artists, new tunes, demos of the week, best new video, just name it. Forget the Facebook battle.
I guess he still doesn’t get it and put a ugle “Sponsored Links” section on the homepage with inrelevant ads displayed, since the customer doesn’t login yet.
He don’t know his user, that simple.
Anyone who has ever studied branding like me would know this issue. So bad too many execs don’t know…
until they rise up from their identity crisis, MySpace is a misnomer; it should really be called AdSpace.
The arrival of Katie Geminder is going to make a massive positive impact on MySpace — really, this is a huge good sign for the future UX of MySpace, and thus, the value of the company. Quite a coup for Owen (he brought her to Facebook as well, I think).
Onward…
MySpace STARTED as a social networking site for the music and entertainment industry in L.A. Going back to the original focus will not only help them grow, it is the smartest choice they could make. There are MANY of us that prefer Myspace to Facebook. You can customize your profile, you can find ACTUAL music, there aren’t a bunch of “causes” notifications bugging you, you can choose which apps can post to your page. It is a better platform then facebook because it is geared towards an INDIVIDUAL user experience instead of a mass appeal user experience.
MySpace will succeed, it was intended for music and should have stayed focused on music. Fox came in and messed everything up…and now they’re on the right track.
MySpace is just that, even when they first come into being, nobody seemed to know exactly what they really were!
IMO: music, entertainment, fan related social networking!
Fail social network is fail.
About Techcrunch. One week they say MySpace is doomed because it needs to change. The next it says MySpace is doomed because they are replacing upper management. TC is amusingly biased.
MySpace needs to change, it’s gross. The UI design, usability & excessive flash use should be consider crimes against the internet.
It’s great to hear that our once favorite social network site is still kicking and trying to pickup itself to face the stiff competition on social media market.
now, that made me crave for mysfacebook
You belong on the fucking Hogwarts lawn you fucking trollfaced fuckhead.
geminder is just another poach myspace is making by offering a job title that no one else would. they’ve done this with multiple yahoo employees who’ve done nada. shrug.
Another company on its way …….. good luck myspace!!
Myspace has it’s own place among social networks; Some people became popular world-wide starting with myspace
just 2 years ago myspace was invincible look at it now. its a shame but thats what hapens when giants like news corp take over.
Yes very true. After the taking over by News Corp all it was expected from myspace is to keep generating revenue and remain profitable.
Users ?
What users is Van Detta talking about?
I don’t know what MySpace is either, except that it’s losing to Facebook.
Myspace gone. The system of displaying crap from so many obscure website in peoples’ profiles keeps it running slow even on fast computers with fast connections. Oh yeah and if you are not under 14 or a band, what are you really doing there anyway?