MySpace Extends Conversations 365 Days Per Year
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, January 27, 2009
The days of sending
holiday letters to update receivers about the year's events has transformed into portals in social media platforms. Social media also gives brands the opportunity to continue the conversation with
consumers every day during the year, according to MySpace executive Angela Courtin, who gave one of the keynotes at OMMA Social Monday in San Francisco. Keeping the conversation active is one of several discoveries that MySpace has perfected during the past five years since the company was founded. Consumers want self-expression, positive change and fun, said Courtin, MySpace SVP of marketing, entertainment and content. As use shifts to social media, it's no longer a race to build a destination--but rather constellations that connect, she said.
Consumers have become curators as MySpace developed a model that lets people have a unique fingerprint online to share things they love, from books and music to people. Consumers not only share intimate details about themselves, but plug in advertisers they hold close to the heart, too.
Someone uploads a song, for example. It goes into the "friend feeder" and allows others to discover an artist that otherwise would have remained unknown, Courtin explains. For instance, MySpace Music had 1 billion streams in the first 48 hours of the initial launch.
"People want to become part of change," Courtin said. At the Sundance Festival in Park City, Utah, MySpace worked with Ashton Kutcher to put together a presidential pledge where celebrities sat down and talked about what they are willing to do to help President Barack Obama during his first 100 days in office. The clips went online.
MySpace also allowed its online community to make similar pledges. The videos are being bundled into one package and sent to the White House. "It's a conversation we can have with the community and others during the next four years," Courtin said. "It's not one conversation, but it's about continuing the conversation every day."
Courtin said you know that social media continues to make an impact when the Catholic Pope has an Apple iPhone application and a YouTube page, President Barack Obama supports profiles on Facebook and MySpace, and Paris Hilton continues to blog daily and consumers still care.
Unfortunately the companies advertising on MySpace seem to overwhelmingly be of the mortgage refinance/scam diet variety, and despite their efforts at turning a profit they are in serious danger of losing everything to facebook, who in 2008 grew from a few percentage points smaller to twice the user base of MySpace, while MySpace has been stagnant and has in reality probably gone backwards as it's difficult to tell when someone is no longer using it at all. Facebook has less flexibility and less customization, but much higher quality advertisers, inasmuch as clicking on a link doesn't normally set off your virus protection on Facebook but the brand is such that you would expect it on MySpace. You can talk your way around it with a client but the fact is, it's easier and safer to advertise on Facebook, LinkedIn or elsewhere and leave MySpace to the super diet secret folks who, after all, need to advertise somewhere too and are obviously getting a decent ROI. But those advertisers are usually a sign of unsold inventory getting monetized as straight revshare or bargain basement prices.
Unless MySpace can do something to turn it around I think it is going to begin to contract at an exponential and catastrophic rate, music or no music. NewsCorp gives the business artificial buoyancy, but I'm not seeing anything that can turn the tide, especially as its highschool audience goes to college and the new high school generation ends up going somewhere else for its social media fix.
Monica: Those super diet secret folks found me on FaceBook too!
It will be interesting to see how MySpace evolves. My feeling is that they are currently hindered by their junky, Vegas-style look and feel. Her point about the consumer being the curator is extremely well taken and that could be one reason why Facebook and Twitter's minimalism and simplicity is more attractive to new users currently.
I was very drawn to the analogy of the year-end letter. I believe you can sum up the point of social networking in this one comparison. As a marketer, I think about the ability of this medium to create momentum. Creating this momentum around a product, an event, or a cause is the difference between harnessing the power of social networking, and swimming around aimlessly. Taking that a step further and tying this possible momentum to other facets of an overall marketing program is what distinguishes the most successful programs.