RE: The First Ten Things the New CEO of MySpace Should Do
By Steve Poland • April 22, 2009
Response to Jason’s MySpace To-Do list:
I think #2 and #3 that I list below are most important. [I aligned them with your #'s].
#3 has the most upside [global to 1billion users].
#11 is an idea missing [they are slowly losing bands, and thus band followers, over to twitter].
1. Buying a search engine is overkill. You don’t care about the search engine, you care about the advertisers — Google has landed them (and due to the mass competition can get nearly 3x revenue what their next closest competitor gets Yahoo …. unless that number has changed) — so have a big emphasis on search, but use Google and take your 80% rev-share that you can negotiate [because Google doesn't want to give up those searches and put a competitor 'on the map']. A search engine isn’t their core competency.
2. There’s a reason MySpace is dead [or dying] — people are sick of the mess! It’s a clusterfuck of clutter! Geocities was the same way. Yahoo — same way [which is part of why Google took over Search]. I’d maybe think of introducing a “flip-side” of MySpace — a sexy, clean, cohesive version — and then the version where users can go buckwild-style on their pages [hell, bring back the 'blink' tag and let them go at it]. I think in order to take-over mobile, you need to clean up the mess first on the website.
3. Global efforts and race to 1billion users: Partner/buy global social networks that don’t overlap too much with your existing userbase. Also, need to internationalize the site [if it hasn't been already; FB has users doing this for them].
4. You’re talking a massive overall here (no more coldfusion? ahh!). But maybe it could be outsourced to the gods… http://www.pivotallabs.com/
5. Games: Fuckin’ bingo. No brainer; can’t believe this hasn’t been done yet. Oberon Media, they should go buy ‘em.
6. Love the virtual currency. This is still up for grabs; they could potentially shift into OWNING this space — and hell, MySpace Coins might make their way into Facebook App games if they were the most dominant virtual currency. [And that is, if the USA could grasp this concept]
10. Content sites: Agreed, but this is insignificant in the big pie they are tackling.
11. They use to OWN the bands, they still kind of do, but Twitter is hopping in there and grabbing a piece. Twitter owns the communication; MySpace owns their space. I’ve been watching ‘30 Seconds to Mars‘ and ‘Imogen Heap‘ on Twitter — both are in the studio working on new albums; it’s been exciting to watch their progress (and I’m in great anticipation for releases!). Anyhow, they need a “status update” service.
/end
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