MySpace?s death spiral: insiders say it?s due to bets on Los Angeles and Microsoft ? Scobleizer. I’ve been watching the death spiral MySpace is in for a while.
Back in December I interviewed CEO Mike Jones onstage at LeWeb. Back then I thought maybe MySpace could pull it out, but since then I’ve learned the MySpace “plane” that’s in a death spiral has increased its velocity — in the wrong direction. Since talking with Mike in December I’ve been asking people involved what went wrong and two common themes have evolved: 1. Their bet on Microsoft technology doomed them for a variety of reasons. 2. MySpace Bleeding Money; News Corp Promises 'Overhaul' Soon. The category of News Corp's business that includes MySpace lost $174 million in the fourth quarter, worse than the $136 million it lost in the same period last year, the parent company said during its earnings call this morning.
But News Corp plans to stick with the beleaguered social networking site, the company said, and a "major overhaul" will be finished in a few months. MySpace’s Hail Mary Strategy: “Discovery” MySpace’s new slogan, and the theme of their new product strategy, will be “Discover and be Discovered,” we’ve confirmed from multiple sources.
This will be their differentiating factor from Facebook, execs told employees at an all hands meeting last Thursday. The meeting was called in the wake of the firing of CEO Owen Van Natta and the related promotions of Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn to co-presidents. Open Thread: Can MySpace Really Make a Comeback? For months, we've been fielding rumors (and filtering out the facts) about MySpace's proposed redesign and rebranding.
Tonight's report on TechCrunch outlines a few minor details of the overall plan to stop the site's hemorrhaging users and stem its financial decline. As we've known (and as we predicted last year), the site will shift its emphasis from pure social networking to content discovery and recommendation. The site's tagline is expected to change to "Discover and Be Discovered. " But is that really enough to bring users back? What would it take for you to start regularly using MySpace again? Disclosure: The writer of this post has been privy to a great deal of internal information about the redesign due to personal connections in the L.A. and S.F. offices.
With the abrupt firing of CEO Owen Van Natta two weeks ago, we are reminded of his initial duties when he was hired less than a year ago. The outlook isn't good, to say the least. Let us know your opinions in the comments. Twitter Just Passed MySpace in Number of Status Updates. Twitter made news today for announcing that it now sees an average of 50 million status messages posted each day.
A sharp growth curve indicates that activity on Twitter could grow much higher in the short term future. Good old MySpace says it can't be counted out yet, though. MySpace told me tonight that it still sees 1 billion status messages per month, divided by 30 days that's about 33 million status messages per day. That means until just last Fall, MySpace was still bigger than Twitter. How easy is it to forget that? Above: Quantcast's estimates of website traffic, not including Twitter application use. I went onto MySpace tonight and found that 9 out of my 21 friends on the site had logged in within the last 30 days, many of them this week or today! I've got my MySpace account wired up with my Tweetdeck install now, so when my friends do post something I'll be able to see it. So two things to consider. Above: Kevin Marks skewers MySpace critics, including yours truly. MySpace Is Far From Dead.
Posted by Tom Foremski - February 11, 2010 Om Malik over on GigaOm seems to confuse office politics at MySpace with the demise of the social network.
Rupert Murdoch's $580 million MySpace purchase has outlived not only its utility, but has also finally hit its expiration date. That last step came with the announcement this afternoon that Owen Van Natta was stepping down as chief executive of the company. This was nine months after he joined the Los Angeles-based venture. It's circling the drains, if you ask me. Changes in leadership do not mean MySpace is dead. As one of the commenters on Mr Malik's post pointed out: If you check the most recent comscore, MySpace has grown 2 months in a row, and is back up to 120MM users worldwide. MySpace’s Mid Level Management Structure Is Crumbling. The problem with all of these people who are walking out the door at MySpace isn’t so much the number of them, because MySpace is trying to replace them by hiring more people.
It’s the fact that the best people are leaving, and taking a lot of the knowledge base with them. Three star senior employees left to go to cross-town startup Gravity, we reported earlier this week. And tonight we’ve heard that Jeff Webber, the engineering director that oversees the email, instant messaging and other “communications” platforms for MySpace, resigned earlier this week as well to join a startup. He’s been at MySpace for nearly three years and was one of the star engineers and leaders, says one source. MySpace Is Far From Dead.