1. Team lakers Tiffany lau David mangold Emily nguyen Xiang zhang
MySpace
Team lakers
Tiffany lau
David mangold
Emily nguyen
Xiang zhang

2. MySpace To-Date Background Features Acquired by News Corp. in 2005
Same design
Advertising partnership with Google in 2006
Protecting Minor Members in 2006
External Content Issues ( )
Acquires Photobucket (2007)
Features
Profile Control
Entity Profile
Bands
No network/Digital Representation
Blogs (2005)
Mobile (2006)
Online Video (2006)
MySpace Chat (2007)

3. Facebook To-Date Background Features College  High School  Open
Turns down multiple acquisition offers
Viacom
Yahoo!
Privacy issues
News Feed
Beacon
Microsoft purchases minority stake (2007)
Features
Limited profile control
Information control (Network)
News Feed (2006)
Beacon (2007)

4. Market Trends – Audience for Online Services
MySpace is the clear market leader with more than 3x the user base of the next closest competitor.

5. Market Trends - Monthly Unique Visitors
Facebook is showing significant growth (approx double in 7 months)
Youtube is also showing significant growth
MySpace shows greater seasonal change than growth, growth is stagnant

6. Market Trends - Pages Viewed per Visit
MySpace’s pages viewed has been nose-diving for the last 7 months. We need to give the users ways to explore and reasons to stay.

7. Market Trends – Internet Content Spending
Expected 78% growth in total internet content spending over the next 3 years, almost all of which is driven by online games and digital music

8. Market Trends - Summary
Myspace is the clear market leader (3.75x the user base of the next closest competitor)
Myspace’s growth is stagnating while Facebook’s is exploding
Myspace’s page views per visit are nose-diving (need to give users ways to explore and reasons to stay)
Expected 78% growth in internet content spending over next 3 years, almost all of which is driven by online gaming and digital music

9. Competitive Environment – Customer Segmentation and Product Differentiation
Myspace
Customer Segments
Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, ‘burnouts,’ ‘alternative kids,’ and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm.
Bands and other creative and artistic users
Only ~35% of users in household with annual income over $75,000
Differentiating Features
Full Profile Control
Loose Privacy Settings
Entity Profiles
Facebook
Customer Segments
“the goodie two shoes, jocks, or other ‘good’ kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college.”
General middle-upper class college and high school students
50% of users in household with annual income over $75,000
Differentiating Features
Limited Profile Control
Only friends can view personal info
Affinity Groups
Facebook: “the goodie two shoes, jocks, or other ‘good’ kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college.”
Myspace: Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, ‘burnouts,’ ‘alternative kids,’ and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm.

10. A Crossroads
Myspace must decide how to respond to Facebook and is considering 2 options:
Joining Google’s OpenSocial
Creating it’s own developer program

11. Join OpenSocial Match Facebook functionality without major investment
Pros
Cons
Match Facebook functionality without major investment
User data would be available to Google through Google’s own sites
“Open Source”: Applications would work for competitors without much modification

12. Launch Own Developer Program
Pros
Cons
Ability to request payments to use its platform
Could create own aesthetics
Differentiation
Costly
Not sure what OpenSocial would look like
Uncertainty regarding launch date

13. Summary of Issues
Myspace hasn’t changed it’s interface since 2005, it needs a new look to correspond with it’s new direction
Myspace is popular with alternative, creative users who value freedom and self-expression, it needs to focus on this core group
Myspace has been limiting external content for years, much to the dismay of it’s users, it needs to allow as much freedom of expression as possible and work through the legal issues
Myspace’s core user base cares about creating a new digital persona and connecting with others through similar interests, Myspace needs to focus on making that easier
Myspace has been limiting media ability and it needs to heavily expand its media capabilities to capture the emerging digital music and online gaming markets

14. Recommendation Launch it’s own developer platform Myspace needs to
It may be a large initial cost, but the social networking market is all about market size and market share and the cost of losing users because we can’t compete isn’t worth it
Myspace needs to
1) Reaffirm its Brand
2) Segment and Specialize
3) Expand into Media

15. Recommendation (cont’d)
Reaffirm its Brand
Redesign the site to re-imagine the brand
Segment and Specialize (launch it’s own developer platform)
Myspace users like freedom of expression (think about profile control), this allows them to interact and post content the way they want, keep user data and differentiate for Myspace
It would make it easier for users to integrate external content, which is necessary for Myspace to continue to provide for it’s creative and artistic user base
It would further allow its users to connect with each other in new ways through Myspace
It would allow users to create more ways to integrate different types of media into Myspace and help capture emerging markets (Music, Gaming, Photos, Video…)
Expand into Media
Expand integration of music for bands, it is important emerging market and Myspace is the market leader in social networking for music
Create a News Feed that specifically caters to Entity Profiles and interests so fans can stay up-to-date with their favorite artists and artists
Look for strategic partnerships with the music and entertainment industry