Myspace: From Glory To Oblivion
Introduction
This project is about the social networking Myspace and how one of the biggest in this area failed and lost space to the Facebook. The main idea is show how Myspace could keep as a leader in this market innovating in some importants aspects such as layout and features that users really enjoy and could not live without. We will talk about the Myspace story and a bit on Facebook as well. In this project you will find the main reasons why Myspace failed and how the founders could have avoid this situation. The goal is create a action plan to keep Myspace as a leader between the social networks and always keep the user loyalty with these ideas the people certainly will be #Myspaceteam.
Importance of Social networking
First of all social networks are one of the fastest growing industries in the world and there is a projection of 25% annual growth over the next 5 years. The social networks are a way to share your life with friends, keep contact, follow matters that you like but currently this industry have a new and big function: the advertising.
These platforms can be used to increase your business visibility. The SMM Social media marketing is a form of Internet marketing with unpaid efforts that utilizes social networking as a marketing tool. However there are a marketing that it is paid and this moves a lot of money inside social media this type of advertising combines current targeting options to make detailed target group identification possible. With social media advertising, advertisements are distributed to users based on information picked from target group profiles.
What is Myspace
Myspace is a social networking website that it was founded by several employees from the internet marketing firm eUniverse on August 1, 2003. The website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, groups, music and video. The core team included Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolfe, Josh Berman and Tom Anderson. Myspace was the largest social networking in the world until 2009 and it was acquired by New Corporation in 2005 for $ 580 million and in 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the USA. In their best momento, in 2008, it was attracting 75.9 million unique visitors a month.
Beginning of the end
Facebook was opened to the public in 2006 and destabilized the popularity of Myspace some years after. Tom Anderson one of Myspace founders said “Facebook is quite different” and because of this he did not worried to innovate the Myspace and lost space in the market. The Lifewire, an information and technology advice website, reported that Myspace had 95 million unique visitors in March 2010 but dropped to 63 million by March 2011. Facebook, though, upped the ante. By December 2009, with 350 million registered users, it was officially dubbed the world’s most popular social platform.
‘The’ Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook while studying psychology at Harvard University and in February 2004 launched as The Facebook. The site's features have continued to develop during 2007 and became one Facebook without The. Users can now give gifts to friends, post free classified advertisements and even develop their own applications. As of February 2011, Facebook had become the largest online photo host and in October 2011, over 350 million users accessed Facebook through their mobile phones, accounting for 33% of all Facebook traffic.
Myspace currently
Myspace still exists and it was purchased by Justin Timberlake in 2012 with Tim and Chris Vanderhood. They redesign the website as a social media platform specifically catered to artists and their fans. On June 12, 2013 Myspace officially announced the launch of a new desktop and mobile platform, and Time Inc. acquired Myspace three years later in 2016.
Five whys of fail
The 5 Whys is a technique used in the analyze phase of the Six Sigma methodology.
Repeatedly asking the question “Why” you can uncover away the layers of symptoms which can lead to the root cause of a problem.
Problem: Myspace lost users.
- Why did Myspace lose users? Because he did not innovate his functions.
- Why did not he innovate his functions? Because he did not feel threatened.
- Why did not he feel threatened? Because he did not believe he had competitors in the market.
- Why he did not believe he had competitors in the market? Because he believed he had the best product.
- Why he believed he had the best product? Because he did not do market research and did not care about consumer experience.
Lack of loyalty to its users Myspace was launched to appeal to “Generation Y”, between 13 and 15 years olds with bit of internet nouse and a superficial understanding about how to socialise online. The platform failed to adapt and capture the attention of the adult market for this reason as young people grew he lost more and more space. Myspace founders believed that the first version of platform could be sufficient to keep the success and a lot of users. Lack of innovation If the MySpace user has one friend or a thousand, the product will still work in same way and this it is a big problem in this social media because do not adapt conform user necessity. Despite the October’s redesign, MySpace still operates in a similar way to when it first launched in 2003, with only a handful of minor usability updates over the last five years.
The steps of innovation
Myspace could have been the most important social networking in history if it had been concern with innovating and anticipating users need. Thinking of ways to innovate Myspace and keep it as a social media deal we can consider the following option of Business Model: Customer Loyalty “Customers are retained and loyalty assured by providing value beyond the actual product or service itself, i.e., through incentive-based programs. The goal is to increase bound to the company, which protects future revenue”. The idea is to create a model in which the most frequent users are rewarded for the time of participation in the Myspace, for example, users who complete one year have received a new feature, users with more than two years another and those who complete five years of use of Myspace will have the opportunity to use the platform without internet connection. Using the location service, Myspace could suggest close friends so people with similar interests could connect. In addition the design would be renewed at least once a year adapting to new trends and market needs.
Value and Need
Value: the innovation would add value to Myspace users because they could in a single social network keep in touch with friends and also meet new people who are close and have similar interests. Besides that users will be stimulated to stay in Myspace and win new features according with the time of use. Need: the society needs to feel inserted in a social environment, with this new proposal of Myspace it not only maintain contact but also create new relationships. People will feel the need to be connected to Myspace so as not to lose events, it will be a new way of communicating between young people and adults.
Sustaining innovation
A sustaining innovation improves existing products. It does not create new markets but develops existing ones with better value, allowing companies to compete against each other sustaining improvements and this is the idea improving Myspace: create new versions that can compete with Facebook and other similar social networking.
Evolutionary innovation
The new version of Myspace will be a evolutionary because it is focused on changing an existing product “change human life less but still involve progress that makes a difference in some ways”.
Technology innovation
We can consider a technological innovation because it involves the search for new features that anticipate the needs of users and make the time spent on Myspace increasingly interesting and necessary for them. You will also need to use technology to improve layout accessibility.
The 4Is
Initiation Myspace failed because it did not consider competitors as a threat and so did not innovate enough to maintain user loyalty.
Who is the target customer? Everyone who uses a computer and wants to keep in touch with friends and people with similar interests.
What do you offer to the customer? A complete social network that adapts to the needs, offers constant news like layouts and new exclusive features and also the possibility of finding people using location service.
What is the value proposition? A place where people feel connected and need to be part of, a new way of life and communication. People who are not registered on Myspace would miss important social group events.
How do you make money? Different groups of people would draw attention from brands to make advertising partnerships.
We could even work on new features that involve sponsorship of specific brands. Ideation The basis of social networks is technology, the main idea Myspace had already won users and improve this company by means of updates is the best option. Create a loyalty of users with exclusives features and do a market search to change the layouts regularly and give the opportunity to use social networking offline it would be the way to keep as a leader in this area.
Integration
We will start with a BETA version for some users and ask what they think about, what was the problems, what was really good and suggestions about what can be add. The BETA tests will happen during a month and after this we will provide to everyone. Implementation The plan involves updates and rewards for the users who complete one, two, three years in Myspace and each five years. Then we will have feedbacks all the time and using this opinions to improve the social networking this it will make us sustain our project and continue to capture more users for the platform.
Risks
We will have two ways of dealing with risks: avoid and control. Some possible risks:
People do not trust in Myspace to share location;
People do not complete more than one year;
Facebook or another social networking launch better features before us;
Although the innovations and features people can prefer another social networking.
First of all we will try avoid the risks ensuring updates good enough and always think in our users. However if one of the expected risks happen we will control betting in the quality of Myspace and search more effective ways to keep users attention and loyalty. For example we can offer a personalised design for some users making Myspace even more a way to express ideas.
9. Conclusion What we can learn after this project? Never underestimate your competitor. One of the biggest error of Myspace was do not believe that Facebook could conquer the same audience as him. The proposed innovation is more than improve the Myspace and avoid that it lost users for Facebook but overcome barriers of the time and anticipate trends that people will want and need as an offline version for users with more than five years in Myspace. Does not matter how great is your company, product or service. If you do not innovate and think in what customers need your business will failed because there will always be a new person willing and with amazing ideas to change all market. The best way for you do not lose your market is to be this person.
