More strategy for MySpace
Since MySpace lost it’s VP of product strategy - I’m gonna keep spewing out free strategy to them - as they’re the ones who are keeping Facebook honest. I hope everyone noticed that as soon as Facebook launched their Facebook platform - all of a sudden MySpace started to open up themselves.
Sure it took over a year to happen, but changing courses in the middle of the stream has never been easy. Just ask Microsoft about that. And that’s what MySpace has proven it can do. So now they just need to keep re-inventing themselves.
I highly doubt MySpace would have ‘opened up’ if it weren’t for Facebook - so thanks to Zuckerberg et al for that one. MySpace’s support for OpenSocial and they’re pushing the envelope of openness with MySpaceID are the cornerstones of our open success story - so let’s not forget to thank them for that.
So me handing them this strategy is my thanks. 
I have these vivid memories of standing around a pool in Westwood (LA) and trying to explain to Ross Levinsohn (who was the boss at the time) that they HAD to open up MySpace. He literally laughed at me.
That was almost three years ago (at a Rafat Ali’s mixer) and my how time flies!
That’s why I know it’s possible to dream, to insist upon ideals and stay true to my gut feelings when it comes to strategy.
Six years ago I told Jonathan Abrams that Friendster would go out of business with the attitude he had towards “owning users” - and all he seemed to care about was that he had just gotten Kleiner, Perkins VC money. The fakesters scandal showed how little Abrams understood his users, and it didn’t take a crystal ball to figure out that Friendster was doomed.
Five years ago I started demanding that large BigCos release their user’s data.
Four years ago I stood up and asked Bill Gates to give us two-way APIs so that user’s could move their data anywhere they want - and THEY GAVE THAT TO US!
For years I’ve stood up at conferences and asked the same question over and over again. Lots of people complained - but that’s what you have to do to draw attention to an important issue. The truth is that I knew (down deep inside) that the world would open up. And it has!
We just had to put out our own “Bill of Rights” to get us there!
So who’s to say that MySpace won’t reposition itself and expand where Facebook isn’t?
Who’s to say that MySpace won’t zig while others zag?
I don’t wanna come off as some sort of curmudgeon (and only focus on the negative) so I DO want to highlight some of the great things MySpace is doing.
The credit card idea simply rocks and fits right into my previous repositioning campaign.
MySpace Music is clearly ahead of the pack and resembles what Cyworld did in Korea. At one point Cyworld’s music service was the second most profitable music service in the world - after iTunes.
MySpace band pages are still a MUST when it comes to launching and maintaining a band’s publicity and public presence and these pages have grown to being a marketing vehicle for many other kinds of content and products. In fact you could easily say that Facebook is copying MySpace when it comes to ‘pages’.
And MySpace is even figuring out how to monetize music videos.
MySpace users seem to be heavily into staying on MySpace. While 50% of Facebook users come back once a day, it’s MySpace users who STAY there.
And then there’s MySpace’s customization capabilities which has given birth to an entire ecosystem of CSS themes and allowed their members to ‘express themselves’ like no other social network. Sure it’s caused them headaches but that is the price you have to pay for taking risks.
So now onto what they’re doing wrong.
I agree with Michael Arrington that Facebook’s strategy of going International is working better than MySpace’s. The notion of opening up offices in every country you want to do business in - is the traditional way to go - but if you’re selling banner ads, you pretty much need to put sales bodies on the ground. So I think this is one place where synergy with the mothership comes in.
News Corp in general has to re-tool and wake up. Rupert’s empire is (partially) based upon newspapers and uh - gosh last I looked that’s tanking pretty rapidly. So an overall International consolidation, which would include getting rid of the extra FIM structure - is probably a pretty smart thing to do right now.
So shut down those local MySpace offices, move those sales people into the local News Corp office and make sure the music rights you ‘negotiated’ with the major labels - works overseas as well!
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A MySpace engineering manager left an interesting comment to my previous post about Internet Access in Peru and the challenges the third world has is ‘keeping up with the 1st and 2nd worlds.‘ She agreed that shopping malls are the center of ‘modern’ culture in the 3rd world, as my experiences have shown in India, China and elsewhere.
Even in Italy the one place you can be SURE to find a McDonalds is at the local shopping mall.
And all of these shopping malls - around the world - now have empty retail space.
So in fact this strategy I propounded is something that local municipalities will latch onto. Finding some way to educate their youth, get them off the street, get traffic back into the local malls and connect the dots between:
- the Internet
- the local job and business market
- the youth and job skills
- and major world wide brands
…would be a tremendous strategy! The publicity for this sort of ‘MySpace rebranding‘ would also bring kudos from far and wide (thus raising News Corps stock price) and the live events and kiosks would also spread out MySpace in exactly the places where Facebook ISN’T.
Needless to say synergy has been the underlying notion that drives convergence. But real synergy is something we rarely see.
I always assumed that MySpace would be a key link in News Corps strategy and that cross-promotions between launches and banner ads would be relegated to NON-News Corp advertising partners. Yet - that’s about the best we’ve seen from MySpace when it comes to ‘the Simpsons’, ‘24′ or ‘House’.
My GOD people - do I have to spell it out in B&W?
- House opens up a whole world of medical facts, diagnosis skills and psycho, personality games.
- 24 is all about real-time, simultaneous story lines
- and the Simpsons has redefined sarcasm in the world today
You’re telling me you can’t figure out some fun activities for MySpace ONLY members to connect to these content properties?
And in this day and age of catastrophic meltdown, even MySpace members are worrying about the economy and where else to turn to - than the Wall St. Journal?
I haven’t heard back from Chris or Allen yet - but I’m optimistic they’ll at least listen. They have to. They can’t afford not to. They (eventually) listened when I chastised them about being closed.
Hopefully it won’t take as long this time to come around.
Maybe some band with a big presence on MySpace could dive in an sponsor a mall-based experience as you describe, to help its fan base cope with the current recession. A really big band, or individual, maybe even the right celebrity with an international presence could cut through the media clutter.
Re my earlier Comment about newspapers doing this on a metropolitan basis, it’s true their efforts have largely been ho-hum online. But you point out that MySpace already has some newspaper connections, and it could build on that to bring more players into the mall party with big daily newspapers bringing some of their resources to bear. But newspapers alone don’t have the cachet to catch the kids’ attention.
Maybe some band with a big presence on MySpace could dive in an sponsor a mall-based experience as you describe, to help its fan base cope with the current recession. A really big band, or individual, maybe even the right celebrity with an international presence could cut through the media clutter.
Re my earlier Comment about newspapers doing this on a metropolitan basis, it’s true their efforts have largely been ho-hum online. But you point out that MySpace already has some newspaper connections, and it could build on that to bring more players into the mall party with big daily newspapers bringing some of their resources to bear. But newspapers alone don’t have the cachet to catch the kids’ attention.