Skopinski+Strategy+Report

TO: //Proximity// Social Networking Team FROM: Nicole Skopinski DATE: January 6, 2009 SUBJECT: MySpace Strategy Analysis

Profile

MySpace, owned by News Corporation, is a social networking site which allows it's users to be in contact with people all over the world. With over 100 million users, people are able to connect with friends, family, and also meet new people. MySpace was developed in 2003 by Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolfe, and Tom Anderson after Friendster, created by Brad Greenspan's company eUniverse, became a hit among the younger generation. In the beginning, MySpace was supposed to "mimic" (Wikipedia, 2010) Friendster and use it's good qualities, but by 2005, having been under it's third owner, MySpace surpassed it's expectations and became one of the leading social networking sites.

MySpace's revenues come from one place: advertisements. It's most recent major source of revenue came from Google. Myspace was paid $900 million by Google to have a search option on their site.

Competitive Landscape

Myspace's main competitors are Facebook and Twitter. Even with the raising popularity to "tweet", Rupert Murdoch, owner of New Corporation, does not plan on selling out or buying Twitter. He claims that Twitter has yet to find a way to make it's own money and with the new applications being added to MySpace, he feels as though his website will prevail.

MySpace's Strategy

Murdoch has seen Facebook's success explode. In order to counter-act this and make MySpace more appealing to it's users, the creators have added applications and games to mimic the activities on Facebook. MySpace has created a picture tagging application, a mood/status application, and games such as "Mafia Wars". They have also recently combined with the popular music site imeem. By doing this, the site has opened up the ability for users to put music on their profile pages, something that Facebook has yet to do.

Gen-Y Implications

A main concern of social networking for Gen-Y is safety. On the news, we've all heard about young girls and boys getting abducted because they have revealed too much information to someone with whom they've never met. To prevent this, MySpace has a restriction that any user must be 13 years of age to join. The problem with this is that there is no way of knowing if the real birthdate that a user gives when they sign up for MySpace is correct; many users lie. Once a user selects a birth year, it remains the same the entire length of his/her profile life.

Myspace has become a dating site for many of its users. On more than one occassion, I have received a message on MySpace saying "Hey, I want to get to know you", "Hey my name is [insert name], wanna talk?", and, my favorite, "Hey, I'm in town and you're cute so let's meet up." There are so many predators on social networking sites that all users, including Gen-Y, have to be extremely careful.

References:

Wikipedia. (2010, Jan 6). MySpace. Retrieved January 6, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace.

Wikipedia. (2010, Jan 9). MySpace. Retrieved January 9, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace.