I wouldn’t bet against MySpace. They attract over 70 million people a month
(just in the US), and by most accounts are still one of the 10 most
popular sites in the world. They also have a new management team,
that’s headed up in part by Michael Jones (COO), the most all around talented internet executive I know.
But they’re clearly headed in the wrong direction, and have been for
the last two years. Having grown up in LA, and having started Docstoc
down here, there’s a bit of a shared connection. I know many of their
founders and early employees, and one of the co-founders of Intermix
(the parent company of MySpace) is an investor. MySpace has lost the
battle as the “place for friends”. If the powers that be, can accept
this, and move forward with breakneck speed, they have an incredibly
huge opportunity to build something we will all be talking about again.
The following are my 7 Ways on How to Save MySpace
1.) MySpace = Yahoo2.0: Turn MySpace into the Next-Generation Portal
MySpace
should not require a login to get into the site, and I DON’T want to
see my profile when I do log in. It should be the next generation
content/ entertainment portal that leverages millions of user profiles
to more accurately provide data to advertisers on what is appealing to
specific demographics.
• Management will have to be willing to forgo millions in revenue in
the short term by giving up the coveted advertising on the login page,
to rebuild a compelling user experience
• Take away the primary focus on the logged in home page, on my profile
and other users profiles – MySpace is no longer the popular online
destination for connecting with friends, but it still is a traffic
behemoth
• Get users immediately into valuable content that engages them in the
site: featured video, music, news; video, popular trending items in my
network
2.) A Micropayment Ecosystem for ALL Digital Goods
MySpace
Music was an ambitious project, but it was executed moronically. They
should have leveraged their relationships with the labels to recreate
an ITunes that allows users to listen to songs in full and pay less
than $1 a track. MySpace should also have the ability to save my credit
card and with a click of a buy button, enable every user to seamlessly
purchase any digital good
• Music – enable a dead simple player on band and profile pages that
lets users upload their songs and have them purchased for any price
they set
• Movies – no website has more Hollywood DNA. Work with the studios to
have premium Hulu-ish content prominently branded and for sale
• Artwork/Content – let users upload and share virtually any digital
content including artwork and documents that they can promote and sell
3.) Local News Online & More Valuable User Generated Content
The
user generated content on MySpace is user profiles, updates, blogs and
pictures. MySpace should leverage their users to create millions of
topics pages indexed in search engines. This could also be done by
leveraging a partnership (or buyout) of a site like Mahalo.
• Local newspapers are dying all across the country. Rupert Murdock
is quite the fan of newspapers. MySpace should create thousands of
online local newspapers that can be managed by a small team of virtual
experienced editors and powered by a community of millions of citizen
journalists.
• MySpace should be leveraging editors and their community to create
millions of topic pages that can be indexed by search engines and drive
traffic. Think eHOW or About.
4.) Court Star Power
Who are the evangelists pimping MySpace? Where is there Ashton Kutcher
& CNN. MySpace HAS followers, what it doesn’t have are people
excited to promote themselves on their platform. If MySpace can amass
millions of users following celebrities, thought leaders, and
evangelists these self promotion hounds will bring everyone else back
and keep them engaged.
• MySpace’s attempt to copy twitter with “Status and Mood” was lame and sophomoric in comparison to Facebook’s play.
• Make the Status updates an exclusive benefit that ONLY celebrities
and famous people get, and move millions of users to follow those
select groups of evangelists.
• Kill the “friends” concept. I’m not friends with most of the people
that are connected to me on social networks. There are people mutually
connected, people I follow, and people who follow me.
5.) Fuel Micro Jobs
The
world is flat, but it’s also poor. There are millions of people all
over the world and in the US who need supplemental income. Amazon’s
Mechanical Turk is an amazing service that that enables the exchange of
micro payments for any variety of activity. MySpace should be the
conduit for the exchange of billions of dollars, connecting people who
need work done with people who need work.
• Leverage a worldwide community to enable a perfect market for
outsourcing activities like online research, writing, & content
review.
• MySpace’s active users on average have less discretionary income than
Facebook’s active users. Empower working mothers and folks out of work
all across the US with the opportunity to make an additional $20 – $500
a month doing various online service based projects.
6.) New Product Releases Every Month & a Rock Star Product Evangelist
MySpace
has come out with a thousand new features since I started using the
site, but most seem to be buried in the navigation structure. The
MySpace product management and dev team, need to bite of smaller
projects, get them out more quickly, and make sure they are exposed to
everyone visiting the site.
• Have a set date every month where the public knows MySpace is
coming out with a new key feature, and build excitement and buzz around
these releases. Their development process need to be more open &
transparent to get the community excited about being part of reviving
the MySpace user experience.
• In the early days of MySpace, Tom used to post messages all the time
talking about new updates, fixes and features to the site, and even
personal notes. MySpace needs Tom to be Tom again – the evangelist
always communicating and involving the users. MySpace lost its personal
touch, they need it back.
7.) Hustle & Chutzpa
I recently finished “Stealing MySpace” by Julia Angwin.
The book is an incredible accounting of the history of MySpace. Anyone
who reads it should be amazed at a how a group of founders and
dealmakers that were perpetually underfunded built one of the best
known internet sites and had the largest financial exit of its time.
They did this because they had Hustle and Chutzpa, and it’s the same
DNA that Rupert Murdock has. But somewhere in-between it got muddled.
MySpace surpassed Friendster in large part because they were quicker
to iterate, they took more risks, and they turned their mistakes into
opportunity. They built a fundamentally revolutionary user experience
enabling friends to connect online.
But that risk taking mentality seems long gone. I hope that MySpace
is place I want to start visiting again every day instead once a month
out of morbid curiosity. I want Facebook to legitimately have
competition, so we all benefit as consumers. Most of all I want MySpace
to take their 1000 plus employees & 100 million plus users and take
big risks.
MySpace is giant, and giants don’t quietly fade into ambiguity. They
should be killed in glorious battle making a mosterous roar as they
fall to a more worthy opponent; or they they take they place as an
endangered warrior that albeit bloodied and wounded, outlasted all
their counterparts and remain immortalized for generations to come.
