Oh Rupe, you've done it again....
BTW: How's that paywall coming along?
The very expensive, sorry tale of how to turn a cool digital business into a boring corporate leper has ended with a painful US$545 million loss for News Corp and perhaps a chance at resurrection for MySpace. Following a prolonged sale process the social network has been sold for a bargain $35 million, to digital ad network …
I've never seen a My Space page that wasn't a complete and utter mess. Overlapping graphics, flashing graphics, pages a mile long - the list is endless.
I'd have thought a media savvy company like News Corp would have made some effort to sort out the page layouts. That they didn't speaks volumes about NC.
You should have also put up a paywall for anyone accessing Myspace. Then your losses would have been minimal. Simples.
Yeah would be interesting to have some figures on Times paywall subscribers numbers. Now it should be £5 per visit to recover those losses.
How about it?
My hand is down (thumb in this case - no hand icon) - as they might have got a bargain.
There ought to be some money in Myspace. I use it occasionally. If I hear a song I like, I can go there, with but a few clicks, and usually listen to a whole bunch of the band's other songs. This can be done with minimal effort, on any computer I happen to be, other than my iPad (oops no Flash)....
Admittedly my eyes will probably be assaulted with a hideous page layout, but I have quick access to a handful of songs to listen to, and can usually see a list of the band's upcoming gigs as well.
There ought to be some money there, even if it's only by setting themselves up as a ticket agent, or selling mp3's. There are large numbers of commercial organisations (bands) and their customers on the site - who are carrying on their commercial relationship elsewhere. So the revenue exists, if only they can mange to snag some of it, and perhaps get someone else to do all the messy work of fulfilling the orders.
That's not what the site was set up to do, but it's an opportunity that's been available to them for several years now. Perhaps it's not too late?
Timberlake said: “There’s a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect."
and that place is called Facebook.
Stick to the singing and dancing about would be my advice, son. If you could make sure you do them where i can't see or hear you. Cheers.
Facebook rather sucks at engaging fans in the music/media/content production arenas. Even today Myspace is a lot better at streaming audio and video which is why it's mostly populated by bands now. Their music streaming widget really is quite nice.
Also to those of you complaining of the awful, awful layout on Myspace pages you can turn that off now. As a user you can tell Myspace to render ANY page in the default format and clear off all the cruft.
Looking ahead if the new company sees Myspace as a competitor to Reverbnation I for one am all for it.
I first came across MS as pages linking to up and coming bands and musos. Come to think of it, it's STILL the only time I go there, though pretty much all of those bands and musos now have Facebook pages (as well or instead of). Probably not because FB is any better, but simply because they go where the most users/potential followers are.
But yes I agree MySpace pages were never (and still aren't) pretty to look at :-\