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It's too late for Myspace

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Re: It's too late for Myspace

#11

Post by mortenjorck »

yobb wrote: post #3

I think myspace is still a viable place for a musician to set up an online presence.

It is, but I can't imagine it's growing compared to the competition.

What Facebook has done to Myspace's social networking user base, Last.fm is well on its way to doing to Myspace's musician base. It's the same pattern, countering Myspace's rustic offering with vastly superior user experience and more ambitious functionality.

Anecdotally, I haven't logged into the Myspace account for my music project in at least 18 months. All the action's on Last.fm.

Re: It's too late for Myspace

#12

Post by fredoliveira »

dooshydoo wrote: post #10

I disagree. It may be too late for Myspace to be Facebook, but any business with an audience, no matter what size, has potential. Many struggling businesses would kill to have a fraction of Myspace's brand awareness; to make a left turn and have someone care. Instead of losing hair wondering why people are leaving in droves, they should reverse their attitude and kick people out. They should go very narrow, maybe cre…

It depends on your audience. I agree with your point that they should reinvent themselves (I explicitly say those words in the article), but I don't agree that any business with an audience has potential.

Lets put it this way, actually using your example: If they do reinvent themselves as a student-only network, they effectively have no audience, because as you know, those folks are on Facebook. If they create a premium service and play the privacy angle, they'll be trashing 99% of their functionality today, and also alienating their audience.

Things are definitely not that easy as "having audience" -> "being successful". Not in this case anyway.

Re: It's too late for Myspace

#13

Post by [deleted] »

dooshydoo wrote: post #10

I disagree. It may be too late for Myspace to be Facebook, but any business with an audience, no matter what size, has potential. Many struggling businesses would kill to have a fraction of Myspace's brand awareness; to make a left turn and have someone care. Instead of losing hair wondering why people are leaving in droves, they should reverse their attitude and kick people out. They should go very narrow, maybe cre…

[deleted]

Re: It's too late for Myspace

#14

Post by dasil003 »

dooshydoo wrote: post #10

I disagree. It may be too late for Myspace to be Facebook, but any business with an audience, no matter what size, has potential. Many struggling businesses would kill to have a fraction of Myspace's brand awareness; to make a left turn and have someone care. Instead of losing hair wondering why people are leaving in droves, they should reverse their attitude and kick people out. They should go very narrow, maybe cre…

Potential for what though? MySpace was purchased for $580mil, expectations were high.

Who wants to turn MySpace into a little $10mil niche product? Certainly not Murdoch. And anyone with that ambition probably would rather start from scratch that associate themselves with a failed brand. It's all psychological.

Re: It's too late for Myspace

#15

Post by InfinityX0 »

It's not too late for Myspace - it's just too late for Myspace to be Facebook or Google.

They still have strong brand equity that they can use to generate an extremely profitable website, but what they require is a fortitude and humility to make a hard pivot, fire tons of people, and shrink dramatically.

They can't operate at scale any longer, but they do have the opportunity to leverage what still amounts to one of the top 10 brand names on the internet and use it to create something that makes a select few rich - and more importantly, actually creates value for others.

Re: It's too late for Myspace

#16

Post by code_duck »

coderdude wrote: post #2

It didn't help that most customized profiles ate more CPU than running Quake. MySpace users discovered the worst CSS practices, or was it the "get MySpace codes" sites?

MySpace's own layout is heinous. Tables in tables in tables in useless tables.... the site is completely insane.

Re: It's too late for Myspace

#20

Post by dooshydoo »

dasil003 wrote: post #14
dooshydoo wrote: post #10

I disagree. It may be too late for Myspace to be Facebook, but any business with an audience, no matter what size, has potential. Many struggling businesses would kill to have a fraction of Myspace's brand awareness; to make a left turn and have someone care. Instead of losing hair wondering why people are leaving in droves, they should reverse their attitude and kick people out. They should go very narrow, maybe cre…

Potential for what though? MySpace was purchased for $580mil, expectations were high. Who wants to turn MySpace into a little $10mil niche product? Certainly not Murdoch. And anyone with that ambition probably would rather start from scratch that associate themselves with a failed brand. It's all psychological.

Well put. I wasn't taking the half billion in acquisition cost into consideration. However, I think with their still-huge current audience, a couple of cool-by-association acquisitions(pandora,indeed) and celebrity spokespeople, it stands in a very good place.

As a competitor to Facebook, they're sinking. But if social networking in this capacity turns, taking their medicine now for poor-sighted assumptions could make a so-so company poised to look smart in hindsight, should they right the ship.

I agree, there are major disadvantages to having this kind of link to old industry money too(being slow, hackneyed CEO culture, etc.) But, Murdoch is wily and buys talent.

I wouldn't bet against them; if for nothing else, their vehement protection of pride.

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