MySpace has been called a lot of names over the last few years; it has gone from the most popular site on the web, to a site lagging behind the times, to a cautionary tale about social media marketing. The one thing they had going for them for years was that MySpace was the place to go if you wanted to hear the newest music from new and emerging talent. Sadly even that ship has sailed to better seas as YouTube recently eclipsed the struggling social network as the home for online music. The title of internet music king is one of the things that made MySpace the social media juggernaut. This has far reaching implications for both sites and even the entire social media scene.
By blowing open the online music scene, YouTube has given themselves an upper hand on their competitors like Hulu (who already recently shot themselves in the foot by announcing they will start charging for parts of their site but that is another article here) Having the extra traffic that goes with it makes YouTube’s stats skyrocket above the competition. YouTube could find itself eclipsing Facebook and being second only to Google as the most visited site on the internet.
Being the most visited site for music on the planet gives YouTube some leverage in one of the areas they have struggled in over the last few years, licensing agreements. It’s already started when they struck an agreement with Disney to launch their new musical acts that resulted in the success of people like Justin Bieber. Now that YouTube actually has a massive fan base some of the companies that rallied against it are soon going to be in the position of having to play ball.
Looking forward, YouTube needs to do all they can to make sure people know they are the place to launch new bands and music. Getting this title was hard enough but, as MySpace can attest to, keeping it can be a precarious undertaking. One step they should take is to utilize iPhone and mobile apps. They’ve already started a partnership with Vivo but they need to go further. One reason MySpace lost this title was because they didn’t expand with the technology. YouTube should learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of other companies too. If you can learn from other companies’ marketing mistakes then you have just given yourself a huge advantage.
So the question remains – where does this leave MySpace, the internet’s equivalent of last year’s toys? Even though they’ve been struggling to stay relevant in a crowded social media and internet marketing scene, they are still a potentially viable commodity and a mainstay on the top 150 most visited websites; that at least means they have a following to build on. So why is MySpace in such a decline?
I think the biggest reason is that it was overrun by robot advertisers and fishing scams. It became next to impossible to separate who was trying to get you to listen to their band or sell you something legitimate and who was just trying to get your e-mail address for their mailing list. One of the things that made Facebook great is that they have things in place to prevent robot messages. (Some people think they do this at the expense of privacy laws but I don’t see that as a problem) Twitter and even YouTube need to watch out for this because even they are starting to slip.
Ultimately if MySpace is ever going to return to its former glory it needs to clean up its network and get rid of all the bugs and bots. Make it what it was before it got watered down, a place to find the latest trends, music, movies, etc. Promote it as a network for people who don’t want to be bombarded with invites and cheesy games. Make it a place people want to go to promote their material and visitors will follow.
In the end what you can take away from this is that internet advertising is a constantly changing life form that has to be looked at 24/7/365. It doesn’t matter if you have one of the most visited websites on the planet or a few thousand followers if you don’t grow your presence and keep up with changing trends you could find yourself being passed over…but, hey!, no pressure.
paidcontent.org/article/419-youtube-v.-myspace-music-what-a-difference-two-years-makes
techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/youtube-vevo-team-to-stream-the-national-concert-more-events-in-the-works
Twitter Offering Regional Targeted Ads and Becoming The Place For Social Media Marketing in 2012 - January 20th, 2012
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