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Forum Moderator
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News Corp puts MySpace on life support
Last curtain call
04 November, 2010 News
Rupert Murdoch has spelled it out for MySpace due to the site's less-than-stellar performance. If results don't improve, it's all over. Well, not Murdoch per se, but News Corp's COO, Carey Chase, has left a rather resounding message for MySpace management.
According to AFP, the COO slammed the Digital Media Group for poor financials as it turned out a $156 million operating loss this quarter. The official line is that MySpace is to blame for what happened, losing much-needed ad revenues and membership to the likes of Facebook.
MySpace has been unable to keep up with the growing popularity of Facebook and has even recently reinvented itself as a hub and soapbox for young musicians. This will keep MySpace alive for a while, albeit with the kill-switch firmly in the grasp of the executive hand.
"The current losses are not acceptable or sustainable" said Chase, "Our traffic numbers are not going in the right direction", which we can only understand as the 'opposite of up', which itself is in no way different from 'down'.
Current numbers have MySpace pegged for 100 million users, while Facebook has exceeded the 500 million mark and rising. So if things don't look up for MySpace, Murdoch's $580 million investment seems poised to be flushed down the drain together with the aspirations of millions of budding musicians... something almost worthy of a Live Aid itself.
MySpace's current predicament joins The Times of London's paywall in the big bag of not-so-good-moves from News Corp's Digital Media Group. Although they'll argue otherwise.
Read more: http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/11/4/news-corp-puts-myspace-life-support/#ixzz1Exp0i4xD
Original Link:
http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/11/4/news-corp-puts-myspace-life-support/
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Forum Moderator
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Last Login: 5/10/2012 12:54:47 PM
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http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/MySpace-Looking-to-Fill-its-Advertising-Space/
MySpace, the website that used to reign as king of the social networking world, is looking for suitors to fill up its ad space. News Corp., the media conglomerate that owns MySpace as well as other popular entities such as the New York Post, Twentieth Century Fox, and much more, is currently trying to fill the void that will be caused when its current contract with Google runs out at the end of August. Besides Google, other suitors for the ad space include Yahoo and Microsoft.
The advertising contract began in 2006 after News Corp. chose Google's offer over Microsoft's and Yahoo's. Google agreed to make payments to News Corp. that would total $900 million for the right to sell advertising space on MySpace as well as other websites owned by the corporation. At that time, MySpace was an Internet sensation. Such is not the case now, however, and that means that the next advertising deal will likely be for much less than the current one. There were several benchmarks set in the Google contract for things such as web traffic that MySpace has failed to reach, making the site now seem less attractive and profitable than it once was.
MySpace is not only experiencing trouble with decreasing traffic numbers and the prospects of a less lucrative advertising deal. In the past few months, former CEO Owen Van Natta was forced out after just ten months on the job, and Co-President Jason Hirschorn has also left the company. Thirty percent of the MySpace's workforce has also been let go. To add insult to injury, News Corp. took a $450 million hit last year due to MySpace's decreasing popularity, along with some of the company's other struggling websites.
The main reason for MySpace's current slump is the growing popularity of its social networking competitor, Facebook. According to comScore Inc., a market research company, MySpace's traffic in May 2010 was down 13 percent when compared to the previous year. Facebook, meanwhile, saw an increase in traffic of 74 percent, with 548 million unique visitors around the globe. MySpace had just 109 million unique visitors. Many analysts blame MySpace for not running with Facebook and finding ways to make the site better and more innovative in terms of features and design. MySpace refuses to go down without swinging, however, and is currently in a renovation stage.
At the heart of the MySpace renovation is a demographic focus on users between the ages of 13 and 34. MySpace has usually been seen as a social networking site for the younger crowd, and they hope they can capitalize on that niche. In addition to the focus on the younger demographic, MySpace hopes to capitalize on complaints by many that Facebook lacks sufficient privacy features. They also vow to make the site a place for entertainers such as musicians and other artists by giving them ways to interact with fans and receive feedback.
Although it should be interesting to see what changes are instituted on MySpace, it is highly questionable whether the site can regain its status once again. Facebook is the hot item right now, and other sites like Twitter are taking pieces of the pie that once belonged to MySpace. Add in smaller advertising revenue from the upcoming contract with Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo, and MySpace has quite a lot of climbing to do to get back to the top.
For more on this, visit the Wall Street Journal article.
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Heavy Cat Status
Group: Moderators
Last Login: 2 days ago @ 7:34:42 AM
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Oh yeah. When the spam-email got too heavy I had the account passed over to moderate.
I keep reading little blurbs like "myspace is still effective"
Ha!
Everyone is on facebook.
No one listens to me. I sead early on that we 9the people) want an Ad-free surfing experience.
Soon as a corporate interest takes note, what do you think they're interested in?
Advertising opportunities.
That kills it.
No one minds a commercial for something they're interested in.
MySpace never built an engine to serve the right commercials.
Right now ReverbNation seems to be the only place that has it all.
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