Dear MySpace,
[With apologies in advance to Mike Macadaan, VP Product, who I believe is genuinely fighting the good fight, and who will no doubt end up with a great job at some fine Internet company.]
It’s over. I can’t take it anymore.
I hereby inaugurate my MySpace Deathwatch, which will continue until my last friend has left the site. (including Tom)
Recent dispatches that are fit to print:
Jon Gibs, vice president, media and agency insights, Nielsen Online, notes “We have seen major growth in Facebook… and a subsequent decline in MySpace. Twitter… (is) perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space… regardless of how fast a site is growing… it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers… (who) are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform… at a moment’s notice.”
Source: Media Daily News.
Actually, that’s being nice, since it doesn’t mention specifics. The straight year-over-year performance:
“…once-hot MySpace couldn’t keep up its own torrid growth and has been one of the few social networking sites to see traffic fall, according to comScore. (MySpace had 64.2 million unique users in August, down from 75.5 million in August 2008.)”
So, we are dealing with a business that is losing 10+ million users a year.
Source: Forbes.
What does this translate to in terms of lost advertising revenue? Here is a quote from the most recent News Corp earnings call:
“Impairment charges in the fiscal fourth quarter were mainly tied to Fox Interactive Media, the unit that includes MySpace, and reduced earnings by 17 cents a share. Advertising sales fell at MySpace, and the company had increased costs to introduce MySpace Music”
Source: Bloomberg.
Now, normally, beating up on someone like this isn’t very much fun, but we are talking about a company whose CEO doesn’t view Facebook as a competitor.
“I really don’t view Facebook as a competitor,” Van Natta said in an interview yesterday. “I personally have a Facebook account and I use it to communicate with my friends and my family. And I have a MySpace account that I use primarily to interact with other people in and around content.”
As they say, sometimes it’s darkest right before it goes pitch black.
Source: Bloomberg.
When you have an obsolete, irrelevant product that nobody wants in the Golden Age of social media, the appropriate strategy is clearly to pretend that you aren’t a social network. MySpace has replaced 4 of its top executives in THIS YEAR ALONE and added at least 2 more. They certainly have their work cut out for them. Let’s meet the team.
- Tom Anderson — President and co-founder. He is now a “strategic advisor” for MySpace, which pretty much means that he collects a paycheck and doesn’t have to show up for work.
- Owen Van Natta — CEO. Facebook expert
- Marc Rosenbaum — CFO. BI and ERP system expert.
- Michael Jones — COO. Founder of UserPlane, which was sold to AOL in 2006. Maybe he can trick AOL into taking MySpace off News Corp’s hands?
- Alex Maghen — CTO
- Jason Hirschhorn - Chief Product Officer. Former President of Sling Media Inc.’s entertainment group. The Slingbox certainly is a great device.
- Mike Macadaan — VP Product. TwiistUp founder.
Go team! One thing that MySpace certainly IS GOOD AT is throwing parties. Please send me an invite the next time you guys want to spend some of that News Corp. money at the Terranea Resort for an “executive retreat.” We can party like its 1999 on a Tuesday night again…
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I never liked MySpace, but it is great for a band website. The music player is always in the same place and it has all the tools that a band needs to keep fans happy and at bay (photos, video, music and a guestbook).
If you’re not a band or a spoken word artist, I don’t know what you do with MySpace.
Your meet and greet is tough but funny. I like the 1999 parallels.
Did you notice yet that Murdoch is threatening to remove Newscorp properties from the Google index. They’ve lost their minds over at Newscorp.
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