The new Myspace: Entertainment hub for Social TV?

written by: Gianluigi Cuccureddu

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Published on Saturday, 30 October 2010 13:29

The new and redesigned Myspace is coming and its new strategy might be something that could work well for Social TV. Mashable for instance reports on the new strategy by Myspace: "supposed to be a transformation from “a place for friends” to “a social entertainment destination.” and "it will focus on engaging a “Generation Y” audience with the entertainment and entertainers that they love. New features like Topic Pages will help users follow their favorite TV shows, music artists, actors and games."

An interesting remark by Ben Parr in the Mashable article is the following:

The redesign seems to be an affirmation of something we’ve known for a long time: MySpace’s strength is in entertainment, not social networking. and MySpace’s new strategy has some major risks. The big one is that it has now established itself as a product of a smaller niche (entertainment for “Generation Y”). In other words, it has a smaller potential userbase than Facebook or even Twitter (). As I’ve said before though, MySpace lost the war with Facebook long ago.

If we relate the new Myspace to the Social TV/TV space, it found itself a new huge market, no niche at all.

Entertainment

TV lends itself perfectly for entertainment purposes, an -vertical- entertainment hub like Myspace can enhance their aimed entertainment behaviors like discovery, collection, connection and creation by being an integral part of the entertainment TV space.

Interoperability

Having a product that aims at a "smaller" userbase than Facebook and Twitter is correct and incorrect at the same time. Apples and oranges are being compared. Myspace will have its focus on a purpose, namely entertainment, whilst Facebook and Twitter are social networks. Different purposes mean also different goals, building a userbase just as big as Facebook or Twitter should not be on their list.

This brings me to the power of interoperability and co-creating and enhancing the end-user experience, Myspace could infuse its profiles with Facebook data. In the most ideal way Myspace would create a Facebook Connect connection, why reinvent the wheel if it already exists. People don't want multiple digital identities.

This will combine the best of both worlds, entertainment and social networking into a vertical Social TV experience. Also in this case, Facebook proves to be both a centralised and decentralised force in the online/social game.

New markets, new opportunities

Now that Myspace has reformulated its strategy, it will (or should) enter new markets and new opportunities. A hub where entertainment and its discovery, collection, connection and creation is at the core creates new opportunities in relation to content providers and distributors. Myspace can become the central and decentral power for entertainment, just like Facebook is doing for social networking. 

Success?

That remains to be seen, but exploring new markets and new value innovation will increase survival and potentially thriving in entertainment.