MySpace is getting into the news business with launch due in early 2nd quarter, according to inside sources and the company’s own sales materials.
- MySpace News takes News to a whole new level by dynamically aggregating real-time news and blogs from top sites around the Web
- Creates focused, topical news pages that users can interact and engage with throughout their day
- MySpace is making the news social, allowing users to:
Rate and comment on every news item that comes through the system
Submit stories they think are cool and even author pieces from their MySpace blog - MySpace users previously had to leave the site to find comprehensive news, gossip, sporting news, etc. With MySpace News, we bring the news to them!
Now it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is not good news for those of us in the news business, unless we view it as another way to get our content onto yet another platform. MySpace is currently cutting deals with content providers to do just that, and I think it’s likely the process will show us what types of “news” will be of interest to young people, circa 2007. And that is something we might be able to use downstream.
That said, this is another example of an internet pureplay company taking on the role of media company and using their core audience as the distribution vehicle.
And we’re about to see a bunch of “real” media companies attempt to grow their own social networks. First up is USAToday.
USAToday.com has relaunched with new interactive features, in an effort to create a “social network” of news users. USAToday has led the way in RSS and customizeable pages, but this takes all that a step further. Users can not only interact with the paper; they can also interact with each other.
While I don’t doubt that this is cool and will help their overall mission (to drive traffic to their site and keep it there), the truth is this is a Media 1.0 play in Media 2.0 clothing. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, because there’s an awful lot of money to be made in the 1.0 world.
The demand is unknown, but everybody in the news business knows there’s a group of news “groupies” in every market, and these, I think, will likely be the users of such an application. This, of course, begs the question why there isn’t already a social networking site called “news groupies,” but that would mean the ability to tap multiple media sources, and this is something media companies abhor. We want everybody to come to OUR portal or OUR site or OUR social network.
This, I think, misses the bigger point of Media 2.0, and because of that, I think media companies who explore this space as a way of bringing more people into their tents may be wasting time and resources they could be spending on developing business strategies within the Media 2.0 disruption.
All traditional media companies speak to their own audiences, regardless of format, but those audiences are shrinking and just because we have elaborate sites online does not necessarily mean we’re attracting a different crowd. People who left “the media” did so for a reason, and no matter how much we try and reformat, remix or repurpose what we do, it still is what it is.
We should strive to do as much of that as possible, of course, but it simply cannot be our only strategy, for the disruption impacting all media isn’t something that brand extension tactics can overcome.
Public Comment