When Mike Jones walks through the hallways at Myspace these days, he’s on the lookout for the company’s old logo on signs or equipment or documents. They’ve all got to go.
For Jones, the social network’s president and chief executive, stripping the Beverly Hills headquarters of the old logo is the culmination of an eight-month transformation of the ailing website.
Myspace will go down in history as being the first big online social networking site. But it also is in danger of getting wiped out by Facebook. Now, the company is betting that it can turn into a new medium: social entertainment.
Myspace Inc., a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., relaunched its website last month with a new focus on connecting people to entertainment content. The site, which will complete its rollout by the end of this month, is an attempt to regain the interest of consumers and advertisers.
“A lot of people look at this as a redesign but it’s basically a rebuild,” said the 35-year-old Jones, looking relaxed last week as he discussed Myspace’s challenges in a conference room at company headquarters in a leafy neighborhood on Maple Drive in central Beverly Hills. “This is an entirely new strategy, brand and product.”
The old Myspace was designed as a site to let people post personal information and keep in touch with friends and co-workers, but Palo Alto-based Facebook has taken that role. The new Myspace.com is designed for fans, and gives them a connection to news and video clips about their favorite TV shows and movies, and music from their favorite singers and bands.
The main page shows live-streaming information about popular music and videos. Users can search for topic pages about their favorite TV show, for example, and see the most recent news articles, videos and posts about it. A fan of “Glee,” for example, might connect with other enthusiasts on that show’s Myspace page and discuss the latest episode.
“They’re trying to position themselves as a social entertainment portal with an emphasis on sharing media content,” said James Dix, an analyst who covers the company at downtown L.A.-based Wedbush Securities Inc. “The issue is whether they are able to bring something special to the table to turn this traffic situation around.”
Dix endorsed the new design.
“They’ve cleaned up the look and it seems less cluttered,” he said.
Along with the new website, Myspace has changed its name, dropping the capitalized “S.” It has also introduced a logo to replace the old blue one that had three silhouettes of people. The new logo is simply the word “My” followed by an empty bracket that Myspace can fill with user-submitted artwork.
“The logo is meant to be this vessel of creativity. It’s unique and fun.” Jones said. “We’re combing through every orifice of the building to find all the legacy logos. We’re calling it the manhunt.”
Entertainment efforts
Myspace’s focus on entertainment content is an attempt to capitalize on a niche the site maintained even as it foundered: an Internet destination for musicians looking to be discovered.
Above all, by focusing on entertainment, Jones said Myspace will no longer try to compete with Facebook.
“Our audience has migrated around content consumption,” he said. “They’re using Myspace to talk to bands and watch videos more than for traditional social networking features.”
Although the website will rely mostly on entertainment content that it aggregates from around the web, a high priority is also being placed on user-generated content. Users who post information about their favorite topics can compete to become a “curator” for that topic. Curators for Lady Gaga, for example, would have their posts highlighted on Myspace’s Lady Gaga page. The more someone posts, the better the chance of becoming a curator.
The site kept some of its old features, however: People can still customize their homepages with different backgrounds, and select what type of news and information they want to see on their page’s stream, a feed with real-time updates similar to those on Facebook and Twitter.
Musicians, both well-established artists and undiscovered bands, can still create pages where they provide streaming music and information about concerts.
Myspace’s best chance at success is through these musician and movie pages where users can listen to music and watch video clips, said Karen North, director of the USC Annenberg Program on Online Communities.
“Their competitive advantage is not in social networking, but in media and entertainment,” she said. “They have a relationship with celebrities and artists. It could really be a hub for people interested in viewing, listening to and sharing media.”
Reaction to the new Myspace has been mixed. San Francisco tech blog GigaOM commented: “Will Anyone Care About a Myspace Redesign?” GigaOM was slightly more kind in a review, calling it “smart in its focus, but a little thin on innovation.”
PC World titled an article: “10 Reason Why Revamped Myspace Will Fail.” Among them: the company’s reputation and past attempts at revival.
North said the revamped site is more organized than the old one and makes it clear that Myspace wants to be a center for entertainment.
“Before, if you went to the Myspace homepage, it didn’t prominently feature that ability to listen, watch and share. The redesign is all about the fact that you can share media and have that entertainment experience,” she said.
Tough times
Founded in 2003, Myspace quickly became the most popular social network on the web.
News Corp. bought the company in 2005 for $580 million, a price that was widely seen as inflated. Today, analysts estimate that it’s worth about $300 million.
At its peak in December 2008, Myspace attracted 75.9 million monthly visitors, according to market researcher ComScore.
But since then, Facebook has achieved total domination over the social networking scene. In September, Myspace had 57.5 million visitors, compared with Facebook’s 213 million. Ad spending on Myspace is expected to decline to $297 million next year, down from $470 million last year, according to research firm eMarketer.
Employees peaked at about 1,600 early last year. The company now has more than 1,000 workers.
Jones believes the site became too unfocused too quickly: adding features like horoscopes was a mistake.
“When you have a very broad product, the audience suddenly asks, ‘What was the original reason I was here?’” Jones said. “We had to pull that back and say this is the one reason we want to you to be here.”
Since last year’s departure of Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and chief executive, leadership at the company has been a high-turnover affair. DeWolfe was replaced by former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta, who left after 10 months. Jones, previously Myspace’s chief operating officer, and Jason Hirschhorn were then named co-presidents of the company. Hirschhorn left in June. Jones, who came to the company last year with a reputation as a successful product developer in earlier entrepreneurial ventures, added chief executive to his title last month.
Jones faces some real time pressure. During a recent conference call with investors, News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said the company wants Myspace to be profitable by the end of the fiscal year – that’s June. News Corp. does not break out results for Myspace, but it was part of digital operations that lost $575 million last year. A company statement to Bloomberg said that Myspace’s share of that number was less than $100 million.
Wedbush’s Dix said profitability won’t be easy.
“A lot of that will depend on the traffic and how people respond to the redesigned site,” he said. “Even so, they’ll probably have to reduce costs to have a shot.”
But Jones says he’s not worried.
“News Corp. doesn’t have a magic date in mind. Chase and Rupert come in and they’re very aware of what we’re doing,” he said. “At the end of the day, we want to excite our audience and get back into a growth path with them as fast as possible.”
