Myspace first launched in 2003 and became the first mega social networking site. During it's hey days 2005-2007 it was the most visited social media site in the world. During 2006 there was even a period that Myspace was more visited than google in the US.
However since then Myspace has experienced significant decline in users, revenue and ultimately value. The peril of Myspace were largely due to incredible rise of Facebook. While Facebook remained independent, Myspace commercialised and became hamstrung to Google and advertisers. This resulted in far too much advertising that invaded users space and made the site slow. Facebook truly surpassed Myspace on all levels sticking with a simplistic, sleek and consistent design while continually innovating.
Fast forward to late 2012, bring on Justin Timberlake (co-owner) and this is the new myspace.....
Another interesting point to note about the new site is that with it's renewed focus on music and artists it appears to not be competing directly with popular social networking sites such as Twitter & Facebook. In fact, you can log into your myspace page with your user ID from either of these sites and then transfer all your contacts over. Just because myspace is focusing on music does not mean it has overlooked the functionality of current leading social media sites. Myspace appears to have incorporated the very best parts of Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Pinterest, YouTube etc Perhaps this is an indication of bigger things to come?
Based on what I've seen so far of the new Myspace, this is the best attempt they've had so far. The use of images, video, content and overall design looks amazing. The first step of the re-launch looks like it will certainly create all the right hype. But there are still a lot of questions that need answered. Can the proceeding steps be done well enough to re-popularise Myspace? Can JT make a difference? Can they attract the right kind of artists to build the site with innovators and early adopters before launching to the mainstream? I think these are marketing questions and with the right kind of marketing they are very achievable.
However, I think the biggest questions will be about the product itself. If Myspace is to become the mega a site it once was I believe it has to provide a solution to multiple social media needs, not just music. But music is great as their core proposition.....it's universally appealing! I think Myspace needs to be as good or better at social networking, sharing photos, videos and interesting web content to really make it big. I hope it can, because personally I'd love to see what that looks like and I need my social media world to start getting simpler.
Does anyone else think Myspace 3.0 can do it? Or let me know if you think it's had its day in the sun.
See I disagree, I think if one of the biggest problems with the old MySpace is that it lost sight of what it was truly about - Music! And it became a SM site where people just wanted to be seen, so when Facebook came along and allowed people to do that better, MySpace had no chance - with the masses turning on MySpace the musicians obviously thought they had no choice but to follow suit, whereas had MySpace stayed true to itself, the two could have worked together instead of against eachother way back then!
ReplyDeleteI do agree though that, yes the new MySpace looks great, but in order to be a force to be reckoned with it needs to offer musicians a complete package, it needs to offer the benefits of all of the individual platforms all in one place and tailored to musicians.
That is also true, it tried to do everything and in the end it did nothing well. Sounds like you are a muso?
ReplyDeleteIt may or may not work again now but like any brand that has died off, a resurrection is very hard. I think people are fickle and always want the next best thing. Still, like I said, it will be interesting to follow.
It will definitely be hard for MySpace to come back and have as big an impact as it did in its hey-days. At the moment Facebook is really hard to topple as we've seen with the low up-take of Google+.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing not helping MySpace is the fact that people have grown out of it and also the reason that people bailed from MySpace was also that it was just uncool any more. I remember reading an article yonks ago that compared the users of MySpace to the users of Facebook and the results (don't remember whether it was realistic or not) were that MySpace users were basically uneducated, trailer park inhabitants and Facebook users were more sophisticated, educated people.
Thanks Gabriel...it always comes down to Cool doesn't it. Trailer trash....too funny.
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