[Infowarrior] - MySpace 2.0

[Richard Forno]

October 27, 2010
For Myspace, a Redesign to Entice Generation Y
By MIGUEL HELFT

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/technology/27myspace.html

SAN FRANCISCO — All but eclipsed by Facebook and Twitter, Myspace is aiming for a comeback.

The onetime king of social networking plans to revamp its Web site beginning on Wednesday, narrowing its focus on entertainment for people 13 to 35 years of age, also known as Generation Y.

“Over time, Myspace got very broad and lost focus of what its members were using it for,” Michael Jones, the president of Myspace, a unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, said in an interview.

Mr. Jones said that the more than 120 million Myspace members were primarily using the site to listen to music and share opinions and information about that music, as well as about movies and television shows. The new site will emphasize that content with a simplified service that removes much of the clutter that Myspace was known for, Mr. Jones said.

And Mr. Jones said that Myspace would no longer seek to compete with Facebook, but rather to complement it. “Our focus is social entertainment,” he said. “Niche players have long staying power.”

Analysts say that burnishing Myspace’s tarnished brand, even with a more narrow focus, will not be easy. While Myspace, founded in 2003, still has a large audience, its fortunes have steadily eroded in the last few years.

Ad spending on Myspace is expected to decline to $297 million in 2011, from $470 million in 2009, according to estimates from eMarketer , a research firm. During the same period, Facebook’s ad revenue is expected to soar to $1.7 billion from $665 million.

As the business shrunk, Myspace suffered from a whirlwind of management changes. Chris DeWolfe, the co-founder and chief executive, left in April of 2009, less than a month after the News Corporation appointed Jonathan Miller, a former chief executive of AOL, to oversee its digital media businesses. Mr. DeWolfe was replaced with Owen Van Natta, a former Facebook executive, who left in February after just 10 months on the job.

Mr. Miller then appointed two executives, Mr. Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, to be co-presidents of Myspace. Mr. Hirschhorn left in June, leaving Mr. Jones as the sole president.

The new design is part of a long-expected plan to refocus Myspace on the audience and content areas that first made the site popular.

“They are definitely trying to become more relevant again,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer. “But it going to be hard, because so much time has gone by.” Ms. Williamson said that outside of the entertainment world, where Myspace still has strong appeal, many marketers have lost interest in the company.

Still, even a diminished Myspace is far from irrelevant. Ads on Myspace currently reach about 24 percent of online users in the United States, according to comScore, the online measurement company. (Facebook reaches 62 percent.)

With the new design, Mr. Jones, who worked with Mr. Miller at AOL, is borrowing ideas from Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, the mobile social “check-in” service. The home page focuses on constantly updating items about music, movies and television shows that are most discussed on the site at any one time. The profile pages of individual users will be more streamlined and consistent in format, helping others navigate them more easily.

Users who are especially active in creating playlists or commenting on a television show — Mr. Jones calls them “curators” — will earn virtual badges and be rewarded by having their links highlighted. Myspace is also creating thousands of pages for television shows, movies and bands, that are meant to become hubs for discussion of those topics on the site.

The new Myspace design will roll out gradually, starting Wednesday and continuing through the end of November. Mr. Jones said that Myspace had also rebuilt the technical underpinnings of the site, making it easier to do future updates.