IP Democracy: MySpace: The Anti-Portal

Can we ever get enough analysis of the red-hot phenom of MySpace? I think not. Part of the social networking site’s endless fascination is just how difficult it is to pigeonhole in traditional media terms.

The New York Times’ Saul Hansell has an in-depth piece today on MySpace and the challenges it faces as it tries to stick to its non-traditional roots while being a part of a very traditional media company, News Corp.

Clearly, Chris DeWolfe, founder of MySpace, is trying to protect the service’s anarchic roots at the same time that Fox executives are trying to monetize it through traditional advertising enhancements, goals that are seemingly contradictory. Still, Fox seems to “get” MySpace.

Mr. Levinsohn [Ross Levinsohn, head of Fox Interactive Media] calls MySpace the antiportal. “It’s not about a central hub, because that’s not where things are going,” he said. “The under-30 set wants choice. It’s not about one destination; it’s about 65 million.”

MySpace calls for some proper out-of-the-box thinking and I love the article’s description of how Fox created an animated square hamburger character that MySpace members could befriend.

The bigger opportunity, however, is not so much selling banner ads, but finding ways to integrate advertisers into the site’s web of relationships. Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers, for example, created a profile for the animated square hamburger character from its television campaign. About 100,000 people signed up to be “friends” with the square.

The big fear is that MySpace could be a relative flash-in-the-pan, and that trendy youth will move on to some other trend sooner or later. DeWolfe doesn’t think that will happen (and neither do I, at least not for a long, lucrative time).

Mr. DeWolfe argues that MySpace won’t suffer that fate because, in just two years, it has already become so entrenched in so many lives. “People are truly invested in the site,” he said. “All their friends are on it. They spent months building their profiles. And so the cost of switching is too high. If we keep building the features they want, they will stay on the site.”

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on April 23, 2006 11:05 AM to IP Democracy