MySpace used to be the social networking site, but Facebook has left MySpace in the dust wondering what happened to its audience. Even the teen audience has shifted to Facebook leaving MySpace behind. As MySpace finally stands back up and starts to dust itself off, someone realized that it was time to reposition the brand. To that end, the MySpace tagline, “a place for friends,” is no more. According to NewsCorp (who owns MySpace), the new MySpace will be a place for entertainment.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp CEO Rupert Murdoch said that the new MySpace will be a place where “people are looking for common interests.” Surprisingly, that doesn’t seem very different from the old MySpace. Isn’t that what social networking sites are for — to find people with common interests? Sounds like it’s time to get a bit more creative in terms of what MySpace will become. The “common interests” position has been done already. What can MySpace bring to the social Web that’s new or better than what people can find elsewhere?
Refocusing the brand is a great idea, and bands and entertainers certainly have become the mainstay of MySpace of late. Let’s face it, it’s the age of niche marketing online, but it’s very hard for brands to reposition quickly enough to keep up with the changing social Web when they’re owned by a company as big as NewsCorp. The repositioning is a smart move overall, but will MySpace be able to truly focus and recreate the site or will it be too hard to let go of the old MySpace? We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
What do you think? Is MySpace as an “entertainment portal” (Murdoch’s words) better than MySpace as a “‘place for friends”? Can MySpace reposition and succeed on a more focused scale? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.