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Stagnant MySpace Lays Off 400 To Become Nimble
MySpace is looking to return to its online upstart roots -- and the first step is to shave 400 people from its workforce.By reducing staff nearly 30 percent, MySpace hopes to restructure into a more innovative, efficient and entrepreneurial business. The plan crosses all U.S. divisions of the company and cuts the total number of domestic MySpace staff to 1,000."Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company," said MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta. "I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product."Is Facebook to Blame?The move to lay off staff comes as Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who owns MySpace parent News Corp., looks for ways to revive his digital business assets. News Corp. acquired MySpace in 2005 for $580 million at the beginning of the social-networking craze. At the time, it was the leading social-media portal, but Facebook and Twitter have taken some of the shine off the brand and the company isn't meeting its financial goals."MySpace grew too big, considering the realities of today's marketplace," said Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s CEO of digital media and chief digital officer. "I believe this restructuring will help MySpace operate much more effectively both structurally and financially moving forward. I am confident in MySpace's next phase under the leadership of Owen and his team."Van Natta took the CEO reins from Chris DeWolfe in April. DeWolfe, who was responsible for growing MySpace from a seven-person firm to a leader in social networking, continues to serve on the board of MySpace China and is a strategic adviser to the company, but News...
MySpace Offers Free Music Downloads — with Ads
Users of the popular social-networking site MySpace can now listen to and download music from several music companies, including Sony, EMI and Warner.Starting Thursday, users will have free access to hundreds of thousands of songs from hundreds of record labels -- but there's a catch. MySpace's 120 million users who want to use the free service need to deal with the advertising that comes with it, and they will only be able to access the service using a PC. Users in the U.S. can also purchase the digital rights management-free MP3 music downloads using MySpace's e-commerce feature. Users can download and buy MP3s on all digital music devices, including Apple's iPod.Chris DeWolfe, chief executive at MySpace, said the deal is the beginning of a new chapter in modern music. "Millions of die-hard music fans and artists already call MySpace Music home. By partnering with these industry leaders, our vision for MySpace Music as the definitive platform for unlimited artistic expression and unrestricted user experience is finally being realized," he said.The good news is that users will not be limited to how many times they download a song to playlists, each of which can hold 100 songs.MySpace Music's e-commerce feature will allow artists to sell tickets and merchandise to fans and generate commercial revenue. Currently, the service is supported by ads and sponsorships. In fact, McDonald's, Toyota, Sony Pictures, and State Farm are sponsoring the service.Time to ListenUsers have been anticipating the new service since MySpace and the music companies first announced the service in April.Users were greeted with this message from MySpace President Thomas Anderson:"MySpace Music has gotten a big upgrade. Today you'll find that some of the world's biggest bands have added their entire discography to MySpace -- all the albums and CDs they've ever recorded!"Anderson went on to...
Facebook Is Reportedly Considering Digital Music
News emerged Friday that Facebook may be considering adding music to its mix. According to the New York Post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is considering getting into the digital-music business.If the report is true, it would put Facebook on the heels of MySpace's latest strategic effort to differentiate itself among youthful social networkers.Rhapsody.com, iMeem.com, iLike.com and Lala.com are among the digital-music sites Facebook is reportedly in talks with. Facebook is also said to be in talks with major music labels. It's a move that would put Facebook in competition not only with MySpace, but also Apple's iTunes Store and Amazon.com, among others. "Facebook is a serious challenger to MySpace and they would certainly want to do anything that record labels would allow them to do with advertising-supported music," said Phil Leigh, senior analyst at Inside Digital Media. "Advertising-supported revenue would be good for Facebook and certainly free access to recorded music would be good for Facebook members. It would be good for the labels, too. If the MySpace deal is working out well, then the labels would probably want to replicate that on Facebook."Streaming Music?MySpace Music streamed a billion songs within days after its Sept. 25 launch. By contrast, it took the iTunes Store nearly three years to reach that mark. MySpace admitted it doesn't know if it can keep up those numbers. Its launch was highly publicized.What's not clear is the pricing model. Would Facebook, if sells music, go with a flat price for a digital download, a subscription model, or an advertising-supported stream, as Leigh suggested? There is no lack of competition on any of those fronts. Nokia and Sony Ericsson are challenging Apple's digital-music empire with a subscription model.In a recent consumer study by Strategy Analytics, 84 percent of respondents indicated a willingness to pay for a...
Say goodbye to Yahoo! Mash
On today's web, so many social sites never get off the ground because users don't easily migrate from their online communities. As much as I want MySpace to die, people will still be using it as long as their friends are using it. Yahoo's mashup social network had a promising start, but it quickly dropped off. Almost a year ago, I wrote a post about how interactive it was, and how addicted I was to it. I remember going to the site 20 times a day because other people had the ability to update my profile page. I could drag around widgets and import feeds. I actually said, “It’s more mature than MySpace, more interactive than Virb, and more interesting than Facebook.” ...
Facebook Is Now Ahead Of MySpace In The US and Globally
New data from ComScore shows Facebook passing MySpace in total unique US visitors for the first time in May. Facebook had 70.28 million U.S. users in May beating MySpace's 70.26 million. According to ComScore, Facebook users almost doubled from last year while MySpace lost 5%.The story is much the same worldwide with 123.9 million unique visitors globally visiting Facebook in May beating MySpace's 114.6M Facebook had 50.6 billion page views compared to MySpace's 45.4 billion.
The momentum also seems to be with Facebook for the forseeable future. The recent addtion of vanity urls should strenghten the social networker's position. MySpace is contiually rolling out innovations, but most seem to be greeted with a yawn in the press and fail to bring any measurable jump in traffic.MySpace still dominates in music. But even there a promised rollout of a by option remains spotty leaving most users more content to buy their music elsewhere and label partners unhappy with the results.Be sure to vote in our MySpace vs Facebook poll.Comments
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