UGC 2.0: In Your Face(book)
I don't have to tell you that there's been a lot of hype about Facebook lately, but I'm going to because it's going to provide me the literary device I need to segway into how MySpace might be making a comeback by focusing on their own niche. For starters, there's been some Facebook v.s. LinkedIn tensions. I thought that is was apples and oranges, but LinkedIn launched a Facebook app before the buzz hurt their rep. All in all, because of how Facebook works, I think that it has enough marketing potential to be either the next Google or next big brother, and I might not be alone on that one.
What this all amounts to is that Facebook has been walloping MySpace's butt when it comes to social networking. Basically, because of how their functionality works, they not only preclude the volume of spam that damaged MySpace's popularity, but they've managed to amass an amount of information on their users that lends them immeasurably more potential as a marketing conduit. Trends in the past week, though, are suggesting that MySpace might be moving back toward online popularity by focusing on what its parent company does best: content.
You see, the whole attraction of social networks is that they are sites that are pretty much powered by their user bases. So Web 1.0 was online content, communicated from the top-down, and Web 2.0 is user generated content generated for an by the users. The problem with so much UGC, though, is that it completely sucks -- especially the kind you find on pimped-out MySpace profiles. This is why Facebook has been stomping MySpace: because they provide a more meaningful social networking experience. Well, it looks like MySpace is moving to turn that around by providing the user with a more meaningful UGC experience.
You might recall that MySpace really got its start appealing to unsigned bands and their fans. Well, they haven't forget that age demographic when it comes to targeting their user base. First, last week, the MySpace partnered with Harper Collins to solicit teen writing:
HarperCollins plans [...] team up with MySpace, according to [Diane Naughton, vice president of marketing at HarperCollins Children's Books]. In the fall, the social network plans to build and launch a new "create and share" writing tool in partnership with HarperCollins, Naughton said in an interview at Mashup. Teens and college kids on the site can write prose and then share it with friends on MySpace. People can then vote on the best writing, she said.
Peddling prose isn't the only way that MySpace is planning to leverage UGC to target the youth demographic. The social network is also partnering with Virgin Comics. As Mike Sachoff reported:
Virgin Comics and MySpace have partnered to launch Coalition Comix, an online comic book platform that will allow users to work with comic book creators in developing and creating characters and stories.
[...]
Each issue will have a creation period of two weeks, with sketches, artwork and scripts uploaded for user interaction. The first comic will be led by comic book author Mike Carey. (Voodoo Child, X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four).
So on the one hand, MySpace is emphasizing the media sharing side of UGC through their Harper Collins partnership, and on the other hand, they are workign with Virgin Comics to harness the creative process itself. As successful as either of these campaigns may or may not be, however, there is no guarantee that any qulaity content will come out of either one of the efforts -- and if content is king, then the higher the qulaity, the larger the kingdom.
Well, Rupert Murdoch isn't a stupid man, and if he didn't get where the future of content dissemination was, he wouldn't own sites like MySpace. That's probably why MySpace is going after broadcast TV too:
[...] MySpace is increasing it's already dominant power if that's possible, by adding the IPTV market to it's bag of tricks.
[...] with financing no issue MySpace has the edge when it comes to reaching a massive amount of people right from the beginning. Not having to build an audience is a gigantic leg-up in any form of entertainment.
Zwick and Herskovitz, drivers of such TV hits as "My So Called Life", and "Thirtysomething" will divide QuarterLife into shorter pieces for Web viewers according to solid sources.
MySpace is reported to have already paid $400,000 per episode.
In short, even though MySpace isn't quite as popular as Facebook, it still has more users. So all it really needs to revive itself is a few new tricks to keep the users coming back. Well, one thing that its owners know is content, and that's precisely what the guiding principle of its latest tricks is going to be. Another thing that its owners know is money, and they have enough of it to get those tricks up off the ground faster than anyone else. This, ladies, gentleman, and users, is how monopolies get started: one part resources, one part marketplace, one part vision/foresight, and one part change. Well guess what: MySpace would never have been possible if it didn't already possess each one of those. All it comes down to now is execution.
