MySpace
MySpace overdoing the hubris a bit?
Hey, MySpace is great and everything — although it got its start as a spam and malware-pusher, according to Trent Lepinski’s recent opus — and we all know that it is the largest Internet site by far (although there’s some doubt about that too) and that it plans to revolutionize the music business and likely many other things as well. But to say that the company can do just about anything that any Web 2.0 company does, because they all piggyback on MySpace? That’s a bit rich.
And yet, according to Marshall Kirkpatrick over at TechCrunch, that’s exactly what MySpace thinks — or at least what News Corp.’s chief operating officer Peter Chernin thinks. He told investors and analysts at a Merrill Lynch conference that
If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flickr, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace. [snip] Given that most of their traffic comes from us, if we build adequate if not superior competitors, I think we ought to be able to match them if not exceed them.
You go, Peter. And then you can get into ad-driven search and put old Google out of business too.
Update:
My friend Rick Segal, a Canadian VC, congratulates Mr. Chernin on becoming the new head of AOL, and VC Fred Wilson has some thoughts along the same lines, but says MySpace can choose either the open or the closed path. If you want some high-level intellectualizing on that particular point, you can (as always) check out Nick Carr, and my friend Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 has some worthwhile thoughts on the issue of control versus openness. Om Malik has posted on the MySpace threat as well — a post he apparently published at 3 a.m. Om, buddy… that’s not healthy, dude. :-) My friends and fellow mesh-ites Mark Evans and Rob Hyndman have also weighed in.
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What if YouTube started its own MySpace?
:)
[...] Perhaps - MySpace is a recognized phenom, though as my friend Mathew notes, just how phenomenal is open to debate. And it does seem that YouTube’s secret sauce isn’t that secret. [...]
It occurs to me that MySpace 1.0 is perhaps trying to be AOL 2.0.
That analogy occurred to me too.
MySpace: Arrogant or Confident?…
News Corp. must be feeling pretty chuffed about its prescient acquisition of MySpace last year. How else to judge a here’s-the-facts-ma’am statement from News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin, who said at an industry conference Tuesda…
Blogged it. Then saw Rick’s post calling it :)
MySpace: full of hubris and proud of it
;-)
[...] Ingram/MySpace: beyond Lepinski. [...]
“What if YouTube started its own MySpace” Great question Rob.
MySpace is the AOL of 2.0. They have introduced social networking / community in an easy way that can be adopted by mass consumers. My bet is that as community catalysts mature (think MyBlogLog, coComment, …) that help build community around decentralized nodes on a network (blogs like this one!) we’ll see two things happen:
1) MySpace will proportionally raise walls around their network
2) Users will seek a more customizable / personal online home and online identity and turn to decentralized solutions now that they can enjoy the community benefits of what has traditionally only been available on centralized social networks
[...] This author’s articles MySpace: Arrogant or Confident? News Corp. must be feeling pretty chuffed about itsprescient acquisition of MySpace last year. How else to judge a here’s-the-facts-ma’am statement from News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin, who said at an industry conference Tuesday that MySpacemay be looking atcreating a YouTube-like service. (Source: Multichannel News)“If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flicker, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace,” he said.“There’s no reason why we can’t build a parallel business.”There are a couple ways to judge Chernin’s statement. One is misplaced arrogance: sure, MySpace has more than 100 million members but we’re talking about fickle people who will jump on the next hot social networking service in a flash. Some smart polling company should spend some time on a university campus to talk about MySpace. They may come away with some surprising data that suggest MySpace’s momentum is slowing down. It is also possible Chernin and News Corp. realize MySpace has become one of the Web 2.0 platforms so it’s doing nothing more than floating a trial balloon about a video service much like it casually tossed out the idea of a MySpace magazine last month. MySpace’s growing membership and clout may give it the power to pursue a variety of strategic options. For more thoughts on MySpace, check out Peter Cashmore, who talks about how there is already a MySpace ecosystem of add-on services that may fall by the wayside ifMySpace decides to imitate them. In some ways, Peter’s post reminds me of Skype vs. its third-party developers. Skype has flourished because there is a fertile add-on environment that makes Skype that much more useful. The problem, however, is when Skype (or MySpace, for that matter) looks at third-party services making money and decides to get into the market themselves. Rick Segal, meanwhile, thinks MySpace is “brilliant” as it drives to create the new AOL. Rob Hyndman and Mathew Ingram also weigh in. [...]
grab more of this attention, and figuring out how to make money in the process and they need to figure out a “developer” plan to make money, not come in the way of those who create widgets to put on MySpace pages, or the actual MySpace community.” Mark Ingram - “Hey, MySpace is great and everything — and we all know that it is the largest Internet site by far and that it plans to revolutionize the music business and likely many other things as well. But to say that the company can do just about anything
[...] Posted by MySpace overdoing the hubris a bit? » Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work on September 13th, 2006 at 10:43 pm | Comment Link [...]