MySpace — which had begun to offer horoscopes,
weather reports and other services — wants to go back to its roots:
entertainment.
The online social network, which once dominated the
field now lorded over by Facebook, will use information that users
volunteer on the site — and the celebrity pages they check out — to
recommend movie trailers, recently released songs and video games to
them.
If it doesn’t make MySpace more attractive to users
— and, not incidentally, advertisers — the social network could be in
danger of settling into a period of gradual decline, like the other
senior citizens of the Internet: America Online and
“It goes back to discovery and self-expression,” said MySpace Co-President
“That’s where we came from and where MySpace really made its mark,
being the place that obsessively catered to creative leaders.”
MySpace has taken a distant backseat to social
networking rival Facebook, which continues to add online users by leaps
and bounds. In February, 111.8 million people signed on to Facebook in
the U.S. alone — up 95 percent from a year earlier,
By contrast, MySpace had 66.7 million visitors, down 5 percent.
Facebook users also spent more than twice as much
time on the social network — an average of 267 minutes per month,
compared with the 130 minutes for MySpace users.
Facebook’s online clout is giving it an edge among
major brand advertisers. Market researcher eMarketer projects that
worldwide ad spending with Facebook will reach
If that happens, Facebook will surpass MySpace, which will see revenue drop 21 percent to
It could be a rough comeback for MySpace. “It’s hard
to find examples of other sites that have been able to turn around
after being considered the darling of the Internet and having a
falloff,” said
After a period of turmoil — which saw the ouster of
Owen Van Natta, a former Facebook executive recruited to revitalize the
site — MySpace Co-Presidents
The duo acknowledged some of the problems that have
plagued MySpace: its mission creep that allowed the social network to
lard on portal-like features that had nothing to do with entertainment.
In the past nine months, Jones and Hirschhorn have
jettisoned sections devoted to weather reports, horoscopes, job boards
and classified advertising, and they have acquired assets such as
iLike, which provides music recommendations.
“We both looked at the business and said, ‘You know
what? We still have over 100 million people using us worldwide. We have
to pick a lane as to what we’re going to be,’ ” Hirschhorn said.
MySpace this week showcased new features designed to appeal to the site’s core audience: people ages 18 to 34.
Some of the additions will make it easier for users
to not only tell others what they’ve been doing at the moment, but also
what “they’re into,” Hirschhorn said.
Self-expression has long differentiated MySpace from the more stripped-down look of Facebook.
On MySpace, an individual’s profile page can be customized to the point of neon garishness.
To aid in refining the look, MySpace has recruited
contemporary artists Shepard Fairey and Buff Monster to design profile
page templates to allow for a more polished presentation.
Borrowing a page from Facebook’s News Feed, which
allows users to update where they are or even their cosmic thoughts,
MySpace has introduced Stream.
In a similar way, it allows users to add their
immediate thoughts — plus videos, music and photos they want to share
with the world — to their pages.
Bands could harness this as a tool to alert their followers to new music and videos.
“As a user, you’re getting exposure to content you’ve never seen before,” Jones said.
But media analyst
entertainment niche, there’s no guarantee that it will bolster the
site. “Can they position themselves to survive and reenergize for
growth?” he asked. “That relies on their ability to find something
content-wise that differentiates them.”
While MySpace may no longer be worth the
“We need to be a platform for self expression that
is clearly differentiated from the competition,” Miller said. “Let
people do their thing, which is where MySpace started, but with the
technological underpinnings that allow things to work the way things
work in the modern world.”
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