The legendary New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra is rumored to have said about a restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.” That is precisely how I feel about MySpace, cisco product which apparently has a lot of visitors, especially in the U.S., where it is marginally ahead of Facebook, but no one I know actually uses it.
Things are only going to get tougher — Google’s deal with News Corp is going to end soon, and with it a steady spigot of cash will be turned off for a service that is struggling to grow revenues. Like an ’80s rock band, MySpace’s time has come and gone. And nothing reflects that more than the exits of MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and his long-time cohort, President Tom Anderson. DeWolfe ran the company from 2003, helped sell it to News Corp for $580 million in 2005 and later helped negotiate a $900 million advertising deal with Google. Since then, MySpace has lost its buzz to Facebook (which is in turn losing that buzz to Twitter). It attempted to become an app platform, but that hasn’t worked out as well. Being a media entrepreneur, I have religiously studied Rupert Murdoch’s career. At the first sign of diminishing returns, Murdoch puts a media entity up for sale, and tries to swap his tin mine for one producing gold. He tried to do that when he attempted to pawn off MySpace to Yahoo.
The clock has been ticking on MySpace and its executives. Earlier this year, COO Amit Kapur and two other long-time MySpace employees left the company because they couldn’t get cisco products the contracts they wanted. Their exit was spun by News Corp. After reading various accounts of DeWolfe’s exit, you can see they left Chris out to dry — something I find particularly distasteful.
Regardless of his exit, there is a strategy in place that could turn MySpace into a decent enough money maker: MySpace Music. By looking to social network’s musical roots, MySpace executives realized that they could build the MTV of the broadband generation. Combining text, audio, video, and social abilities with its audience, MySpace can thrive as a niche yet lucrative musical destination. A lot has to go right for that to happen, though. I have outlined a long list of reservations about MySpace Music.
Back in November 2008, Kevin Kelleher noted, “Social networks spent too much time trying to build audiences without building a solid business model.” With a recession raging and the advertising market in a slump, the social networks have to figure out business models — fast. For MySpace it could mean capturing music industry dollars. MySpace wouldn’t be the first social network looking for niche riches. Hi5, a San Francisco-based social network that’s popular outside of the U.S., recently cut half of its workforce and is said to be pivoting into becoming a social gaming destination. Others are going to soon follow. Folks, what we are seeing is an end of general purpose, broad social networking.
Finally, after nearly two years of us saying so, social is now simply part of the web fabric. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recognized that and since then has been pushing hard on Facebook Connect, which is a simple authentication method that also allows granular social interactions to be embedded in non-Facebook services. With over 200 million Facebookers, Mark has somewhat of a future.
DeWolfe should take this unceremonious exit as a blessing in disguise. Or as Yogi would say, “It gets late early around here…”
Comments
Wonder if Paris Hilton will continue to date Chris after this.
Twitter will take an effect on many of the social networks. Many still don’t understand it, they will soon.
Simon how do you suppose that is going to happen?
Count me as one of those who doesn’t understand.cisco network products How can Twitter supplant the social identity replication serviced by a social network?
Twitter is a content publishing service that, due to the liberty of its usage, has been applied by early adopters as a method of communication, like e-mail. A social identity is much more encompassing than that.
As a musician with 2,500+ Friends on MySpace, I’m happy that Facebook and Twitter are taking so much of the mundane stuff off of MySpace. Personally, I have no interest in Facebook or Twitter because they don’t have musician pages, so if all the non-music fans go there, fine by me. Making MySpace even more music/media oriented sounds great.
“Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded”
Will happen to Facebook too. And I refuse to use any of these lame Social-Networks.
Facebook will be dead in 5 years, less if we are lucky.
In media time and again the “specific always drive out the general.” Here we see it in social networking. cisco reseller I have contended that there are truly riches in niches. I am a fan of social media and I am pulling for MySpace to make this happen. This won’t be the easiest path as they have lived off the fat of the Google deal for some time. They need to move quickly…while not turning away their base. Not easy to do. I am hoping MySpace can pull it off.
