MySpace, by Larry Weintraub
What happened to MySpace? We used to love MySpace. But we got bored because it was too cluttered and the shine wore off. Facebook became our new favorite, and now we say the words MySpace with the same "what happened to them?" tone that used to apply to Friendster.
MySpace still has one thing going for it: music. More than 5 million musicians have a MySpace page. If you are a band, you host the majority of your content on MySpace. You have your van to haul your gear, your T-shirts to sell at shows, your manager to handle your business, your agent to book your tour, and your MySpace page to display your music, videos, tour dates, and talk to your fans.
MySpace knows its last foothold is in music. That's why it hired MTV's digital guru Courtney Holt to run the division. That's why it gave all the record labels a piece of the pie. MySpace hopes to be the destination for you to get your music. Because music is free. The music industry may not accept that yet, but every kid in America knows that music is free, and MySpace has free music.
Music is the soundtrack to our lives, right? What are you doing right now? What is the song playing in the background or in your head? That's the status you want to convey. Imagine using 140 characters to not only say what you're doing but to relay what song is playing while you do it.
If anyone should have Twitter, it should be MySpace. In a MySpace/Twitter world, you can now embed a song in your tweet. The user can choose to listen or not. And if they love what they hear, the song title links back to that song on MySpace Music.
The_Real_Shaq: I'm n baton rouge with feed the children, lotta happy families. Listening to Lil Wayne's "Hot Revolver."
Lardog2000: In Burbank airport on way to Portland. Hard to keep track of 1 year old that just learned to walk. Go B go! Bowie's "Heroes" on the brain
Wouldn't all tweets be so much sweeter with a song? Wouldn't everyone like to accent their status with a tune? We'd not only know what you are doing, but what you are feeling, too!
MySpace's traffic would go through the roof. Millions of people would go to the MySpace music page you pointed to and listen to that song.
Music would be cool again. We'd all be listening to music. MySpace would single-handedly save the music business because people would be listening to so much music. Sure, there are renegades out there doing this now like Blip.fm, but they are linking to music mined from who-knows-where on the web. Only MySpace has deals in place that can make your Twitter tunes legit.
And what a boon to MySpace's revenue. Because of the heightened traffic, advertisers would be falling over themselves to serve up ads on MySpace, or strike a deal to personify their brand with music. What about the data -- the data that MySpace can now add to its arsenal for targeted advertising?
So what price should MySpace pay for Twitter? A year ago, $1 billion would have sounded good. That's almost double what News Corp. paid for MySpace. But competition is fierce. Google and Microsoft will battle it out for Twitter's search capabilities. Facebook will want Twitter just to stop a competitor from getting in its way. But MySpace just plain needs Twitter to survive, to stop the decline, and put it back in the limelight.
TomMySpace: We just bought Twitter. How awesome is that? We're "Dancing in the Streets!"
Larry Weintraub is CEO and co-founder of Fanscape. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lardog2000.
