What is MySpace Good For Anymore?

MySpace = High School Lunch Room
FaceBook = 1$ Bottles w/ College ID
Twitter = Corporate Water Cooler

Right on Madison!

I'd be curious to see if MySpace holds its own with the more blue collar demographic that's rumored to be the core of its user base.

People who read this blog probably don't have many friends who are active MySpace users. But that may be a factor of class and education. Whether that cohort moves over to Facebook with everyone else remains to be seen. But it's quite possible they stay and enjoy the messiness of MySpace.

Like Vegas, one man's trash is another man's class.

Absolutely Alan. I'm trying to bust out of your well-coined NASCAR blindness :)

I think the MySpace audience doesn't see it as messy at all, but as vibrant and expressive. And this really shows how self-sorted we are in terms of race, class, and culture -- even in the networked spaces we enforce those rules.

Agreed. Myspace is a mess and one I rarely venture to any more. That being said, as others have pointed to, its value is still apparent for many groups and they've found a way to monetize themselves that other social sites still haven't.

For one, musicians and comedians. Myspace is still ubiqutous with this crowd, all the way from myspace url's appearing on CDs (people do still buy them!) and promotional material to myspace still being the standard for checking out a few songs before making a purchase decision. As lilmissjen has pointed out, there are plenty of other rich vehicles for distribution of content, but myspace still holds an extremely relevant postion in search inquires, etc... Although, if you're an established band or somewhat established, Myspace does make sense for these reasons, but if you're trying build a fanbase locally, the community feeling of Facebook makes more sense. I play in a local band myself, and every event we publicized through Myspace did ok, but when we finally did a Facebook invite, our crowd grew substantially.

Regardless, Myspace has seemingly decided to become a bigger player in content distribution and less concerned about the social community that Facebook embraces and propogates. The community aspect seems to have taken a backset to content and although people love content, people love other people more. For that reason, Myspace maybe still makes sense from an R/F planning perspective, but for true engagements, I think it's seen its day.

Also, I'd welcome anyone's thoughts on the international aspect of Myspace as it relates to brands. I think the numbers still play out that internationally Myspace is still a much bigger deal than Facebook, with the US numbers for FB just recently topping Myspace. It's an interesting paradox, as the individualistic nature of US consumers would at times point to favoring the differentiation of Myspace as opposed to more collectvistics cultures elsewhere that value loyalty to close family and friends, i.e. the Facebook model. Weird how this stuff works out in reality sometimes! Gotta love it.

All great points. I'm seeing a similar pattern to what you're describing in terms of bands in Facebook. Internationally, MySpace is bigger, but also competes with networks like Orkut and CyWorld that have a small or in the case of CyWorld, nonexistent footprint in the US. It seems like Flixster and Tagged are both taking core MySpace users in the US as opposed to Facebook.

I often wonder if we all (I use that term loosely) simply got bored of Myspace and wanted to be part of the next thing -- Facebook. Entirely possible that due to the same reasons, Facebook will be off our radar in 2 years and we'll be on to the next social network of the hour...Does Facebook have a chance to be relevent 10 years from now? Possibly, but with the industry's thirst for the next big or cool thing, I think it will challenging. And do we even care?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Both Facebook and MySpace are concerned with this, which is why they both launched their friend-connect type API services, to make those friend groups and sites the digital hub for information sharing within the peer group and so that users never have to remember another username and password again.

We'll see if it sticks, or if any other social network ends up leveraging the information and Web service to become a bigger player in the space.

Thanks for getting this conversation started - I have a long-standing beef with MySpace and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. I have never liked the MySpace interface as much as Facebook or any other social network - it's messy, tries to be personal but isn't really, and the canned page layouts are often so bad, they make my little eyes bleed. Also, the whole thing just seems so sleazy and unregulated (let me tell you how I really feel). I like the privacy control I have over my Facebook space, and that they have adapted over time to the needs of their people. It doesn't really seem like MySpace it taking advantage of any capabilities for streamlining and optimizing to help the interface continue to be relevant for the audience.

I think the one area where MySpace serves as a useful forum would have to be for musicians who want to put their names and a few tracks in a public arena. Even this, however, seems like a cop-out to me. There are so many rich vehicles available with which a person can build a meaningful online personality. MySpace just doesn't seem to be one of them anymore.

Your last point is interesting - I would love to see some case studies on current MySpace campaigns. It makes me shiver in my boots a bit to hear our online teams reco'ing them for our plans. If you come across any good research to that end, I would love it if you could pass it along!

Well, I'm very sorry to hear about your eyes. Agreed: the UX of MySpace feels very disorganized to me.

Every page is yelling at me with badly coordinated color schemes, and the platform is too flexible. UI controls are tossed about the page depending on the capabilities of that pages owner. The worst part, for me, is the auto-playing music. Not only created by the owner of the page, but now, many times people will leave comments on the page that include an auto-play clip. I would venture to guess that our shared viewpoint is also based on shared race, class, and culture.

Us white suburban-raised people bristle at the lack of uniformity, joining Facebook as we ourselves embrace our role as adults in society: seeking a cleaner, more standardized, and lower visual contrast experience. These frameworks tell us that we belong here, that we fit in with our peers of past schooling and current work.

That said, MySpace appeals to pre-teens and early teens because of the ways you can completely engineer, take down, and re-engineer personal identity in reaction to your IRL environment and status within a peer group. In this way, it's a lot more about "me" than "you." The browsing experience, while to you and me seems jarring and incongruous, also drives a ton of meaning through high contrast. Not unlike film or TV, juxtaposing high-contrast images is very appealing to people through the MySpace experience.

It's also a lot like growing up in a city where every storefront tries to stand out and get attention: MySpace is a lot like a virtual times square. I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of Twitter, Flixster, and Tagged growth -- these platforms at times seem like they fill a space in between the rigid format of Facebook and the utter flexibility in MySpace.

From this angle, independent musicians are a great fit for the MySpace environment. Kids in these age groups have always been important to music, film, and TV because they're looking for new, artistic ways to show off their personality, and they have lots of disposable cash.

And this does make it a good place for a brand to be to gain awareness. Like the Yellow Pages, you can't not be there. It fits nicely into a lot of plans because it will give you reach and frequency on paper. It's also good to start building equity with younger audiences where they spend their time. The questions still remains, though: how can brands effectively engage in this space to make it more valuable for their audience if everyone's looking at themselves?

Totally agree. It's very MTV, and as such, a great spot for musicians. I follow Butch Walker (my favorite artist of all time) pretty closely on MySpace. He has, however, recently opened up to Facebook, Twitter, etc., which I appreciate, due to the bleeding eyeball phenomenon. :)

I'd posit that it's never been that valuable a platform. I've never had a client that really needed to focus on the demographics present on MySpace -- Facebook has always been a better bet, with more attractive audiences and more interesting options.

Well, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, as I know bands and comedians who tour and update often see people attend from MySpace. Which has been a strange disconnect. So some people are finding value in it -- but is it because similar functions of easily uploading playlists isn't available or not widely known like MySpace music and comedy are?

Yeah, certainly true. I worded my reply a bit too broadly. Beyond the entertainment industry, I think its reach and impact is significantly limited.

And this is the crux of my conundrum: What can we do for brands, users, and entertainers to make it a better or more valuable space? Or is it just an echo chamber of independent artists looking at each other's profiles?