Something is up at MySpace. Everything was quiet for a long while as they went through executive turnover and mass layoffs. But suddenly they are back seeking the limelight.
CEO Owen Van Natta is making his first public interview next week at the Web 2.0 Summit. The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by the same parent company as MySpace (News Corp.) wrote a glowing if somewhat vague turnaround story on MySpace today titled “MySpace Tries to Recover Its Cool.” And, of course, MySpace is throwing a party. Van Natta sent an email to Silicon Valley tech and entertainment press inviting them to a “secret show” concert next week right after he’s interviewed, with the exact venue and band to be announced the day before.
Parties to cover bad (or vague) news aren’t a new thing for MySpace – they threw one earlier this year in Europe right as European operations were being decimated.
The odd WSJ article, which disclosed the sister-company conflict of interest nine paragraphs into the article, seems to be saying that MySpace will focus on social networking around content as a way to win. In a sentence that appears to be directly from a press release, the article says: “In a strategy shift, MySpace is striving to become an online hangout for people to connect with friends over entertainment content, whether it’s the new Pearl Jam album, blogs from celebrities like British pop singer Lily Allen or a karaoke contest for the Fox musical comedy “Glee.”" The article also quotes Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn: “This is not an all-things-for-everybody portal…This is a social entertainment experience.”
And those page view declines? The WSJ article notes that U.S. unique visitors are down 15% year over year. But the article doesn’t note the much more serious decline in page views. U.S. page views were nearly cut in half, from 40 billion to 22 billion per month from September 2008 to September 2009 (Comscore). Worldwide, page views dropped from 44 billion to 27 billion per month during that same period, a 39% drop. MySpace has lost 13 million unique monthly visitors since April alone, when Van Natta began his tenure.
And while the article says MySpace revenue will likely fall this year, they don’t mention the revenue cliff the company faces next June, when $300 million/year in Google welfare money dries up. At that point, there’s no way MySpace will continue to be profitable unless even more serious layoffs are made. I wonder if Van Natta will talk about that on stage next week. I’m guessing not.
They’ve got a strong focus on entertainment content. Many people are strongly connected to the music or the other forms of entertainment they like (e.g., dead heads being one example). It makes sense to leverage into a social entertainment experience since a different angle compared to FB and can be monetized via sales of that entertainment content. And, arguably somewhat more cool compared to Farms and flying sheep.
right. but a year ago all of this was true, too. MySpace Music, etc.
They also tried to do create MySpace Local and create another vertical for content but have failed at that miserably.
what haven’t they failed at lately, myspace connect, myspace mail, myspace page 2.0. I know exactly what they need… they need to hire more executives.
what haven’t they failed at lately? How about layoffs….
Yes, but Natta hasn’t been there that long and they might have been working on whatever he’s announcing (if anything) since he joined. Moreover, they might be detecting or betting on a shift in user behavior.
Definite burn, well played!
+1
I wish I owned a newspaper and could have it write out our iPhone app all the time. That would be so good.
The only thing with worse business prospects than MySpace is newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. Facebook and Twitter have taken over. When I think of MySpace a search engine called Lycos and some auction site called ubid come to mind.
I smell a Google buyout in the works.
ok any big company who want to get a better chunk of the music industry and turn Myspace THE place to be for music lover and artist…
amazon maybe?
there were myspace parties everywhere and they sponsored a lot of concerts back in the day, strange how all that stopped when newscorp bought them
Gotta give it to Mike for cutting through the BS.
Mike,
I got the email from Owen also and it said Weezer. I’d imagine it would be similar to the party they hosted last year during Web 2.0 Summit.
their parent company has the funds to acquire as needed. newscorp needs a business social network stategy.
what ever it is they decide to do they should stick to it and cut all the other clutter, when you go on the site it looks like they are doing a million things and the site is way to hard to use, why cant they just 1. clean up the site and stop with the Vegas strip type ads 2. focus on 1 core product and do it the best and 3rd for gods sake get off of .net and move to php or any thing else
Hey Mike, to clarify a couple things – MySpace Secret Shows are almost always advertiser-supported, and are profitable endeavors for the company in addition to being a great way to give back to the MySpace community. MySpace has done several hundred of these around the world over the years. Also, the EU event you mention took place at GSMA, nearly 6 months before MySpace announced layoffs.
thanks MySpace PR.
MySpace do need to make a big show though, given that they’ve lost the pre-eminence which they enjoyed in previous years. Perhaps in 10 years we’ll be talking about Facebook in the same way. I tire of looking at my FB page and seeing update after update of lost purple cows, fictitious mafia victories and so on. But maybe that’s just the company I keep! I’d be interested to see whether growing companies such as DubLi will attempt similar strategies in the future, myself.
i was largely indifferent toward MySpace
until just now reading this post and learning it’s owned by ‘news corp’ and so i hate it with vengeance!
where have you been living for the past 3 years??
http://www.huff...a_b_207582.html
I moved on from all the social networks once I realized I could “friend” people right outside my door. Plus, they never give me quizzes or smile with emoticons, and not one has lost their purple cow.
A shift to focus on content has to be backed up by a major site re-design. Mike Arrington is right when he said MySpace Music was around last year, but that doesn’t mean users will get the same experience this year. When we see the re-designed MySpace, around its music and video contents, then we’ll see if the users will like it or not.