'Net Features : myspace

The MySpace Comeback: Social Entertainment

Administrator — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:30:00 GMT

Social network MySpace announced it had added one million new members since December 2011 thanks to the introduction of the new Myspace Music player. Sign-ups on the once leading social network, which was acquired by Specific Media in June of last year, have risen to an average of 40,000 new registrations daily.

The greatest asset that MySpace has right now seems to be its catalog of free music. Totaling 42 million songs, that eclipses all of its competitors. With unlimited listening, personalized radio modes, a recommendation engines, and of course an integration with Facebook, MySpace might be able to right their sinking ship. Of course, support from Justin Timberlake sure doesn’t hurt.

"The numbers tell an amazing story of strong momentum and dramatic change for Myspace," said Tim Vanderhook, CEO, Myspace, "and the one million-plus new user accounts we've seen in the last 30 days validates our approach. Myspace is building meaningful social entertainment experience around content, where consumers can share and discover the music they love. Consumers are getting excited about Myspace again - a testament to a great music product."

Now before we get too ahead of ourselves, everything I’ve seen from the data providers doesn’t match the re-growth that MySpace is reporting. Searches on Google continue to trend downward and unique visitors as reported by Compete.com are both pretty dismal. Myspace remains however one of the top 100 destinations on the Internet and that alone warrants some attention – if not respect (for now).

Below is a snapshot of the search volume for the keyword "myspace" from Google Trends. Brand-related terms such as "myspace" do not routinely go down when a site is healthy, active and growing. Keep in mind that this is only the search volume from the past year.

LinkedIn Officially Overtakes MySpace

Administrator — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:00:00 GMT

The June numbers have been crunched, and LinkedIn officially passed MySpace to become the number two social networking site in the U.S.

According to ComScore, Facebook was the number one social networking site with 160.9 million visitors in June. LinkedIn followed with 33.9 million visitors.

And, despite its famous new stakeholder, Myspace dropped to the third spot with 33.5 million visitors. Sorry, Justin Timberlake.

Although LinkedIn trumped MySpace in visitors for the month, the overall number of active users still lies in Myspace’s favor with 130 million compared to LinkedIn’s 115 million. While not a true apples-to-apples comparison (LinkedIn is a social network for business professionals and MySpace is, well, not) it does indicate MySpace's ongoing struggles.

Time will tell if MySpace will regain momentum with Facebook ruling all that is social and the emergence of Google+ posing a significant threat with nearly two million visits last week alone. But, remaining connected with all of them might be a safe bet for anyone looking to stay on point.

The Fabric of our Social Networking Lives

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:48:00 GMT

The Pew Research Center's recent study on social networking sites provides Web marketers with valuable information on social networking services and should act as a real eye opener on the social impact of widespread social networking use.

A few key findings of note for Web professionals include:

- 59% of internet users in the survey say they use at least one of SNS.
- Over half of all adult SNS users are now over the age of 35. Some 56% of SNS users now are female.
- 52% of Facebook users and 33% of Twitter users engage with the platform daily; only 6% of LinkedIn users do the same.

Some insightful data for sure. Perhaps most interesting however (at least to us) was how Facebook is being used. According to the Pew Internet sample, on an average day 15% of Facebook users update their own status, 22% comment on another’s post or status, 20% comment on another user’s photos, 26% “Like” another user’s content, and 10% send another user a private message.

Review the summary of the Pew Internet survey here.

Holiday Ad Budgets Get Social

Internet Advertising : feature — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:00:00 GMT

More advertisers are spending more of their ad budgets on social network advertising this holiday season, according to financial consulting firm BDO, USA. The BDO USA Retail Compass Survey of CMOs examined the opinions of 100 chief marketing officers...(read more)

The All-new Myspace a Model of Rebranding

Mike Phillips — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 18:30:00 GMT

After taking an absolute beating in the social media space, MySpace has finally made a change. And, at first look, it's quite impressive. But before we dive into the details, let's back up a few years.

Myspace was the hottest thing online. Users were flocking to the site, making friends and, most important, expressing themselves. User profile page backgrounds were customized (an entire industry sprang up overnight for Myspace backgrounds), rich media content was published and messages where sent back and forth. Then, Facebook graduated from the college ranks and blew everything apart for Myspace. By February 2009, Facebook claimed the traffic crown from Myspace and never looked back.

That happened, in part, because of the customization factor with Myspace. Backgrounds became loaded with flashing and animated elements, content was shuffled, code was mangled and the site became sluggish and just plain ugly. The atmosphere took on the feel of an online red-light district - anything goes, there was little to no policing of content and spam was running rampant. The site lacked focus. Or, to borrow a favorite expression, the inmates were running the asylum. What was Myspace? Was it a social network? An entertainment portal?

On the other hand, Facebook was sleek, easy to use, lightweight and far less buggy. It was touted as a way to connect with people and communicate. So, the older, more "sophisticated" crowd left Myspace, never to return. But a critical element stuck it out with Myspace - the young, artistic, entertainment-focused and, perhaps most important, musicians. And to this end, Myspace has finally embraced its identity.

The new Myspace* is focused on content delivery - namely entertainment - on a personal and customizable level.

For registered users, the home page will adjust according to your interests and past behaviors (say, if you often click on stories about a famous actor) with fresh content that is constantly updated thanks to Myspace "curators." Users can also choose between three different views - list view, grid view and play view, which allows users to watch, forward and resize their updates to full screen. The image to the right is a user profile in grid view, displaying all of their chosen, customized content.

There are more than 20,000 topic pages (centered around particular matter such as a TV show or The New York Times), hub pages centered on celebrities, movies, games, sports and fashion, recommendations, and a discovery tab that combines videos that friends are watching with what’s trending in real time on Myspace. A 'My Stuff' tab shows a user's personal preferences such as their profile, photos, videos and uploaded content. And, of course, personal profiles can be built and customized - that's the area that appears to have changed the least. But make no mistake - this new brand of Myspace is centered on content, not communication.

Now, let's look at how Myspace rebranded and why it will be successful.

Earlier we mentioned that a very important user group, musicians, stayed with Myspace through the lean years. In fact, not only did they stay but new musicians and bands flocked to the site. You would be hard-pressed to find many bands that do not have a presence on Myspace. So, the website became known for this. If you wanted to hear a band, head to Myspace. Bloggers, music critics and fans knew exactly where to go to hear a few songs in their entirety, for free. In other words, people knew where to go to get what they wanted and Myspace delivered.

This is one element that kept Myspace going and this is what they embraced. Instead of attempting to go toe-to-toe with Facebook, Myspace sharpened their focus on what they do best and what their audience and the greater Web world expected from them. Next, they cleaned up the site and took back a measurable portion of control but left the focus on the user to customize their own content. This is exemplified nicely with their new logo, seen below. It's "My" with open brackets - representing a blank canvas on which users can create whatever they like, carving out their very own space on the Web.

It took time for Myspace to wake up. Perhaps too much time. But, this new iteration of the website has dusted off old criticisms and revamped a once industry-leading brand. Where Facebook is clean (almost dull these days) and focused squarely on interaction and making friends, the new Myspace is all about delivering bright, vibrant and viral content, where and how their users want it.

As a Web professional, does this suggest you should stop chasing the leaders in your industry? Absolutely not. Take this as a lesson in how to relaunch a tired brand and in understanding, then harnessing the power of an audience. By focusing on their core audience and optimizing with that audience in mind, Myspace has an excellent chance to not only survive but thrive in an entirely new way. Every business and every brand has a core strength. Identify what that is, why the audience wants it and then deliver.

*The new Myspace is currently in beta. It will go public at the end of November, 2010.

Digg is Deadd

Mike Phillips — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:30:00 GMT

It was a good run, Digg.com. You certainly had a great idea and funneled plenty of Web traffic to opportunistic and manipulative publishers.

Alas, the run is over. And it's not coming back.

According to the latest Compete.com data (April, 2010) Digg lost an astounding 13.8 million unique visits from March to April, 2010 -- a near 36 percent drop. Apparently sensing impending doom, Digg founder Kevin Rose has made several announcements of retooling Digg, but nothing has materialized. In fact, the announcements might have been the worst thing Digg founder Kevin Rose could have done. It's been over a year since Rose announced that changes would come. In the mean time, Facebook and Twitter have soared and it appears the Digg crowd grew tired of waiting. While the changes seem to be close to a reality now, it's too late.

A recently released video demonstrates what will change with the new Digg. And, by all accounts, it's another social network. An unnecessary one. The main focus is to make friends (starting by importing your social graph from sites like Facebook) and Digg stories. Then, your new Digg page will show the stories Dugg most by all your friends. Sound like something your friends "liked" on Facebook? Or perhaps something retweeted on Twitter?

The biggest problem with Digg in the past was that unless you devoted serious time to it and knew how to work the system, you had little hope of ever making the front page. The only stories that made the front page were typically those voted up by voting blocs; networks of like-minded individuals attempting to send streams of traffic to each others' sites no matter the content of the story. And if you didn't make the front page, the benefits were very little, if any. Now, you still will need to dedicate serious time to the site -- only this time you won't receive near the level of exposure. That is, unless your "friends" vote up your stories at a breakneck pace. Which, for all intents and purposes, puts us right back where we started with Digg. In other words, there's no innovation here and the real value proposition of Digg hasn't changed, it's just become more labor intensive.

In the soon-to-be end, Digg will become known as the first network to die from social fatigue. Facebook and Twitter are booming, LinkedIn is holding steady and even MySpace seems to have settled into a niche. But Digg is in a deadly, unrecoverable tail spin. The fact is, people -- real people -- are beginning to tire. Submit this, upload that, vote on this, "like" that, be my "friend", check in here, suggest this, retweet that ... there's already so much to do. The only thing left to "Digg" is a grave.

Digsby Partners with MySpace and OneRiot

MaureenA — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:30:00 GMT

dotSyntax, the company that produces Digsby announced a new partnership with Myspace and OneRiot. This news comes one day after Facebook announced its acquisition of FriendFeed.

Digsby is a social media and email organizational platform that allows users to manage IM, e-mail accounts and social media profiles on one platform. “Digsby simplifies brand management,” says Erick Davidson, director of public relations, dotSyntax.

The new partnership raises eyebrows on two levels. One, the partnership is with MySpace who has been trying to compete with Facebook while not experiencing the same website visitor numbers that Facebook is experiencing. According to Compete.com, Facebook had more than 122 million unique visitors in July whereas MySpace had 59 million.

The second interesting aspect to all of this is the connection this has with the Facebook/FriendFeed acquisition. Website Magazine covered the Facebook/FriendFeed acquisition earlier this week. When asked if the new partnership had anything to do with the Facebook news from the previous day, Davidson said it was a coincidence. “We worked with MySpace’s open-id API and they were impressed with how we implemented MySpace in Digsby,” he says.

It’s important to note that Digsby has different features and functionality than what’s available with FriendFeed. Digsby is a desktop social networking management program offering control of IM profiles, e-mails and social networking including Facebook. Users can update all these different programs by simply logging into Digsby eliminating the need to log into various e-mail accounts, IM chats, or social networks. However, FriendFeed is known for its searching abilities.

According to the release from dotSyntax, “The new Digsby MyspaceID integration delivers a complete MySpace activity stream, status updates, and photo albums right to the desktop along with real-time notifications, and is available to MySpace’s global community.”

It’s too early to determine the effect the new partnership will have on MySpace and if it even touches the competition between MySpace and Facebook. But nevertheless, this announcement is interesting to those following the changes and transitions in the social networking landscape.

WhatCounts in Social Email

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:19:00 GMT

Email remains one of the most powerful ways to connect with consumers.

But when those consumers spend all day long on social networks, marketers needs to learn how to bridge the gap and leverage the brief amount of engagement that email provides and make it social for extended reach.

Email service provider WhatCounts unveiled Social Email™ today. The solution provides the ability for a recipient of an email to post a link to the message on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many others, by simply clicking on a "Share" button inserted into the email template. It allows email marketers to broaden the reach of their messages into social networks where "masses of potential new customers may be influenced" according to the release.

"As the internet has become an indispensable part of people's lives, we are consuming it in vertical slices that are relevant to each of us," said David Geller, CEO of WhatCounts, Inc. "Whether it's Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, or any of a number of other web sites and tools, consumers are beginning to self-select into communication silos that they control, and then extend to their own social networks."

Version 7.2 also boasts new features in the areas of bounce management and campaign throttling controls for improved deliverability, and a new dashboard that allows marketers to customize key performance indicators on over 40 different views based on email performance, delivery, and subscription performance.

MySpace & Visible Measures

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:13:00 GMT

One of the challenges with video -- in addition to creating and distributing it -- is measuring it effectively. Fortunately, there are companies out there that help advertisers and publishers know a little bit more about the effectiveness of that content.

Video measurement provider Visible Measures has entered into an agreement to become the online video measurement platform for social portal MySpace. The company provides brand advertisers and agencies with a view across all campaign components including syndicated content, social and paid video placements.

MySpace will be able to leverage Visible Measures to collected audience behavior data on the millions of video streams that are served every month and provide advertising clients and content providers visibility into campaign performance and content effectiveness.

“MySpace is a global leader and a premier video-sharing destination that is relied upon by many leading brand advertisers,” said Brian Shin, founder and CEO of Visible Measures. “As we look to help MySpace capitalize on their unique value proposition, we are excited to expand our relationship with them and enable their content providers and advertisers to be even more successful on MySpace.”

MySpace Featured Apps Coming

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:13:00 GMT

Once the de facto social network, MySpace today is overshadowed by the likes of Facebook in a big way. Hopefully, that won't come as too big of a shock.

While that won't change in short order, at least MySpace realizes that you have to work harder when you're in second place. The network is planning to launch a new "Editor's Pick" category in its application directory next week to help members find the platform's best apps. Though that certainly won't be enough to bring back the hordes that left for Facebook, it's certainly a good start.

MySpace has already started accepting submissions from developers:

If you'd like to be considered for this category, please send an email to developerrelations(at)myspace dot com. Include "Editor's Pick Category" in the subject line, and provide a reason why you feel your application should be in the spotlight and why your application stands above the rest. Be sure to include a 200 character description and an 128x128 icon image.

Those that have developed applications for the network should definitely continue producing as long as it yields a return. This program may help considerably. MySpace remains a major player in the social sphere and should not be ignored or added to the dead pool just yet.

MySpace Local: Social Reviews

MaureenA — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:45:00 GMT

MySpace and Citysearch are teaming up to offer MySpace Local.

The new directory combines Citysearch's functionality of allowing users to search, review and rate businesses. And, it adds MySpace's flavor by allowing users to search friend reviews of businesses and share their favorite businesses with their friends and communities.

The first step of MySpace Local is to use a selected group of users to provide feedback and create reviews. The second step is a launch of it in Beta format next month to all users throughout the U.S. The first phase of MySpace Local will offer three categories: restaurants, bars and nightlife. Users can search for businesses on business pages or through "City Hubs" which is available only in major U.S. cities. City Hubs can be searched by neighborhood, small business categories or cuisine type.

MySpace Local is providing small businesses another opportunity to reach consumers - and this time it's leveraging the power of social media communities.

__________

Ready to Start Really Competing In Web Business?
Request a professional-level membership from Website Magazine.

Facebook vs. MySpace

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:23:00 GMT

While most marketers are gaga over Facebook these days, you may not want to rule out MySpace just yet. While the Web media didn't miss a beat on Facebook matching MySpace in terms of unique traffic last week, MySpace was touting its own achievement - namely, "significant spikes in time spent and page views," according to January Comscore numbers.

These user engagement metrics include all time highs in the "minutes per visitor" and "total minutes" categories. Page views also jumped to the highest level the company has recorded in more than one year. Those are important metrics and should not be ignored.

The average MySpace user spends 266 minutes (4.4 hours) on the site every month—a +15% increase over last month and a +31% increase year over year. January is the highest level of minutes-per-visitor MySpace has ever seen. Page views on MySpace have reached an all time high of 44 billion—more than double that of the company’s nearest competitor.

MySpace Still The King

Mike Phillips — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:46:00 GMT

Wondering where to spend your time optimizing for social media? MySpace is still the outright leader of all things social media, accounting for 76% of all social networking visits among a category of 53 of the top social sites in 2007, according to new Hitwise data. Facebook followed with 12.57%, then Bebo with 1.24%. BlackPlanet.com and Club Penguin rounded out the top five. As far as growth, Facebook saw a jump of 51% in December 2007 from a year ago, while MySpace dropped 8%.

A couple of other interesting points:

In December 2007, MySpace received 95% of its traffic from return visitors (defined as a repeat visit within 30 days). Facebook saw 93% of its traffic from return visitors.
New visitors accounted for 5% of MySpace traffic and 7% of Facebook traffic. Bebo saw 16% of its traffic from new visitors.
U.S. visitors spent an average of 29:36 on MySpace in December 2007, a change of -0.2% from last year. Facebook visitors spend an average of 19:51 on the site, an increase of 100% from last year. That's telling, and no doubt influenced by Facebook's decision to open the site to third-party developers.

Finally, the report makes quick mention of an interesting statistic: U.S. traffic to all the social networking websites increased four percent year-over-year. With all the buzz over social networking and media and how it's changing the Internet and changing the rules of marketing, business and SEO ... four percent just doesn't sound like much.