Has MySpace become “MySpaced”?
On reading Techcrunch’s advance review of a WSJ reporter’s new tell-all book on MySpace, I updated my Facebook status with bewilderment that MySpace passed on buying Facebook for $75M in 2004. And I made a Freudian typo…
My Facebook status update – updated over my Blackberry Facebook app:
Adrian is amazed that MySpaced passed on buying Facebook for $75M in ’04.
So, a typo’s a typo, right? Coming from the less than ready for primetime standard of “Facebook Status” updates and then, even worse, authored over a Blackberry device, its relevance is about as significant as me Twittering about an earthquake in California a cool 2 weeks after it happens. I.e., no one cares, bites or gives a tweet.
However, with MySpace being bought in ’05 for $580M by Fox; and for all the talk we heard about Murdoch and every other media mogul trying to seduce Mark Zuckerberg over the past few years, was passing on this $75M transaction revisited? Where was Tom Freston – given Sumner Redstone’s intense rivalry with Murdoch – to sound the horn that corporate acquisitions of innovative start-ups aren’t always obvious in terms of timing and intrinsic value?
To the point: How can MySpace become ‘present’ or ‘future’ tense, instead of ‘past tense’? How can MySpace innovate its model given Facebook’s unbridled, global growth?
Perhaps MySpace needs to revisit its approach to acquisitions. With DailyFill (think Yahoo! OMG but with a Fox feel, and why not, these sites are easy to produce on the cheap) coming out of their Fox-backed Slingshot Labs venture, perhaps there’s a need to address the past-tense nature of MySpace. They have leadership in Chris DeWolfe as CEO, who’s able to juggle Fox Corporate management and keep the site feeling independent, but maybe they need to uncuff a little more.
Go back to their indie or user driven roots. While they claim their home page is eroding marketshare from the portals – as opposed to Google and higher-trending Facebook, we’re wagering that it’s time to take off the gloves and innovate (aka ‘attack,’ make acquisitions and build more niche quick-build sites like anti-Portal AOL) as others hit the recessional locker room.
A spin-out idea of sorts: MySpace Music, like MySpace Videos, will add corporate label buy-in and extend the ‘content’ offering; but do deals with media congloms matter in a social universe?
Alas, when I queried the 100+ people at my CES 2009 panel about how many used Facebook, 90% of the hands went up, when I asked about MySpace, 3%. And this is a tech/business/marketer audience – so if Facebook has gone ‘business’ or ‘corporate, the only way for MySpace to compete, while losing audience, is to become more original. Less publisher with billion-dollar ad goals, and more anti-portal offering. Or … more niche.
I’ve also written in the past that as Murdoch rolls up the news – side bar: definitely read Michael Wolff’s The Man Who Owns the News, which I’m dying to write up here in detail - why wouldn’t he have MySpace/FIM carve up a WSJ white-labeled social net from either the Slingshot Labs or MySpace tech team. Not that LinkedIn wouldn’t be a good purchase, but move into pole position on other demo/psychographic markets before Facebook crosses over them.
Here’s the MySpace tell-all book for pre-orders: Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America, and some interesting preview items:
- FIM’s Ross Levinsohn eventually winning the acquisition for MySpace over a weekend, and thus costing Tom Freston his job at Viacom, due to Sumner Redstone’s failure to beat out Murdoch.
- Tom Anderson’s Asian ‘adult site’ involvement, his pre-MySpace hacking history, and his apparently ‘underaged’ MySpace profile.
- Zuckerberg asking for $75M in ’04, which Chris DeWolfe passed on at Intermix; then asking for $750M in ’05 which Fox, now MySpace’s parent company, passed on again. Have to figure out the timing if Facebook was actually being seduced by Yahoo!’s Terry Semel, who reportedly offered $1B, then tried to slide the offer to $750M on signing , which of course didn’t help Yahoo’s early slide.
Suffice it to say, I think MySpace can revolutionize its network if it makes itself more diverse than a very utilitarian Facebook. Users made MySpace their own a few years back, but with the heavy amount of social networking, social identities, etc. that everyone has to keep up with (think the social nets, microblogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.), Facebook’s clean design and functionality literally make you want to keep your online self and time simple.
Sample FB user activity: update Facebook status, add friend, read inbox mail, (throw vampire)…
Perhaps, too, MySpace has to niche harder, wider and simpler all at once. Or better, find a new call to action that trumps social networking. Anything to avoid becoming a social net expat like Friendster…
Better title for this book, “From Earnout to Burnout – the MySpace/Fox Story”…
It would be fascinating if MySpace or FOX passed on purchasing Facebook, but that’s total bullshit. Where is the proof for that claim? Anguin’s book is a joke.