Myspace – A History & A Future (includes leaked internal slides)

Now i’ll admit from the start that I have a guilty love of Myspace. It was the first social network that I regularly used and it brings back memories of excitedly uploading the latest recordings from my band to their music player to share with the world. After all, back in 2006 bands were filled with a fresh hope! No longer did they have to send out crate loads of demo CD’s to unresponsive record labels, with this new thing called myspace all you had to do was send a message to whichever label you wanted, with a link to your Myspace page and BAM… you’d *probably* get signed there and then. It worked for the Arctic Monkeys and Calvin Harris didn’t it, with the internet suddenly touted as the “home of a new music revolution”

It wasn’t just bands, people - REAL PEOPLE – were using it too. You could suddenly become friends with all of your, well, friends and ‘browse’ the network for like minded (helped if they had a cute photo) people to make new friends.

Then it all went wrong. This happy place for friends became a spam riddled, ad cluttered, clunky heap of a waste of server space. Everyone left for pastures new AKA Facebook leaving the ruinous remains of Myspace to spambot rule.

In 2004-5 Myspace was a place where the ‘kids’ could go hang out with their new friend Tom, away from the eyes of their parents as something that they could claim as their own. Of course any such organisation holding as much personal data as Myspace suddenly did will catch the eyes of ‘the man’. That man was Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp who purchased it for £332 million.

Myspace Timeline

Myspace reached its user peak in 2008 before the behemoth that is Facebook overtook it. So began the fall of a giant with Jack (Mark Zuckerberg) chopping the beanstalk hardest until in 2011 Specific Media picked up the lifeless form that was Myspace, launching a plan to recusitate it.

And here is that plan, apparently leaked from a deck for internal use only (I don’t buy that).

In summary:

• Specific Media hope to position Myspace as “the  number one online community music destination and to “feed the energy of youth culture everywhere”. They name their ‘bullseye’ taget audience as male and females, 21 years old. This seems something of a contradiction to me? A 21 year old is on the verge of not really being considered a youth…surely it would be better to target the 14+ age group?
• They intend to take revenue from “ad-supported music video and audio streaming” a la Spotify.
• They admit that they failed to build a well functioning social product.
• They blame the decline in users on a combination of Facebook and “rumours of impending Myspace sale” in 2010.
• They think Justin Timberlake’s involvement/investment will give them credibility…

Here’s the original deck:

Myspace pitch deck

View more presentations from lizgannesATD

You can read more on AllThingsD where I first read about it

E4 Hijacks BBCThree, Channel 5, ITV2 and Sky Facebook Pages!

Imagine you’re waiting on hold for ITV customer services to pickup. Suddenly someone starts talking to to you but they’re not from ITV, they’re from E4! Now imagine the customer service channel is Facebook and that’s exactly what’s happened….

E4 have been posting on the Facebook walls of ITV2, Sky and Channel 5 and BBC3, answering the other broadcaster’s fan’s questions and generally muscling in on territory that, technically isn’t really theirs!

It seems there’s no sabotage or malicious intent, more doing it because they can and frankly, why not?! As E4 themselves say in a comment on BBC3′s page “we’re just being helpful. It’s really that simple” .

ITV3 somewhat nervously  replied to E4′s comments with “Hi E4, great to see you are a fan of Lee Nelson’s. Enjoy the show tonight and keep watching BBC Three!”

 

I notice they didn’t do it to BBC or ITV’s main channels…however top mark’s E4 PR dept!

New Facebook Changes – A Laymans Summary

More as a way to summarise the updates for myself, here is a review of the changes announced by team Zuckerburg yesterday. There appear to be two sides to the changes – on the one hand we have the changes that ‘Joe Blogs Facebook user’ will care about and on the other, the new Open Graph API that (Facebook hope) will have developers drooling over and will deliver “real time serendipity”.

Facebook themselves split the changes in to three; Your Cover, Your Stories & Your Apps.

Your Cover – Is the header to the new ‘Timeline’ profile that features a main, banner like photo that Facebook say should ‘represent you best’.

 Underneath your header there will now be an area all about YOU called ‘Your Stories’. This section of a users Timeline will detail photos, posts, videos and anything else that may tell people about who you are, what you do and what you’re about.

‘Your Apps’ will be at the lower end of your Timeline. This is the part that Facebook were perhaps the most excited about. Basically Facebook will now be partnering with any service that they might be able to connect with Facebook allowing your Timeline you be an interest aggregator. Users can add the Spotify app for example which will allow your Facebook friends to see which tracks you have listened to.

A whole host of new apps will be introduced including ones from news sources like The Guardian and The Independent, online video and TV streaming  through Netflix or Hulu and other music apps such as Mixcloud and Soundcloud.

Open Graph

Developers will now be able to tap in to Facebook in ways that weren’t possible before using the updated Open Graph API. As Facebook say on this new way of working “The opportunities are endless, such as building an app for runners to share their routes and achievements, photographers to feature the photos they take, and music lovers to share their playlists and top albums with friends. Develop Open Graph apps that will make Timeline the personal, expressive page we believe it can be.”

The new developer options will be based around what Facebook call a Graph Rank which will give prominence in news feeds to apps that users find engaging. New app analytics will allow developers to monitor their apps activity and so optimise apps for an increased Graph Rank.

Conclusion:

I don’t think all these changes amount to the world changing, redefinition of social networking that sites such as Mashable would have had us believe in the pre-launch hype.

Most people use Facebook as either a simple communication tool, whether through comments, FB messages or FB chat. They like to look at other folks photos or if they have a bit of time to spare, flick down through the most recent status updates. But how often does one visit another user’s profile page? Are you really bothered about going to someone else’s ‘Timeline’ to find out all about them? Or they use it to have a nosey at other user’s pictures…

Facebook is basing its latest direction on the assumption that users will become content creaters. It’s going to take a long time to get your timeline looking good. You;re going to have to choose which photo’s best portray you (or how you’d like to be perceived). You need to opt in to each of the apps you want to interact with and feed your profile with regular ‘stories’ about what you’re doing.

Maybe this is exactly what people have been waiting for…however I fear it might lead to a graveyard of features and apps and half completed Timelines. We’ll see. Once i’ve been able to have a proper play with it then the new Facebook’s usefulness may become clearer.

I think the top two comments on Facebook’s own blog sum up the divide in opinion perfectly…

Looks like the comment ‘the world changes, get used to it’ has proved the most popular with Facebookers.

Here’s a video that Robert Scoble took from the front row of the Faceboook F8 presentation