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Viacom vs. News Corp. on Social Networking
dolphinlover writes "The purchase of MySpace.com by Robert Murdoch's News Corporation last year for $580 million has caught the attention of another media conglomerate, Viacom Inc., whose CEO, Tom Freston, has now announced his intentions to purchase or partner with a social networking site this year in order to enhance the company's image with youth. Whether it will also be successful monetarily has yet to be seen, as MySpace.com only had $47 million in revenue in 2005 based on advertising. This news follows Viacom's acquisition of Neopets.com in 2005. For those companies already heavily involved in television and movies, expanding their presence to the Internet provides a new opportunity to gain a foothold over the competition."
You mean "Rupert."
I'm a meetup.com organizer, I just got an (bulk) email today from the CEO suggesting they might be partering/being bought by a major media organization.
Quite a coincidence this is being announced on the same day.
"only" $47 million in revenue in 2005? I'm fairly sure I could pay the rent and eat nice dinners every day with $47 million yearly..
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
I've noticed that Fox and Fx have been promoting MySpace heavily by creating MySpace pages for its television shows.
Since social networking depends on the completeness of its network, people are going to flock to whatever appears to be the leader in the niche. Its like a new auction site competing against eBay - not much room for #2.
Facebook gained market because of its restriction to a well-defined subcommunity. I am not sure why MySpace gained market, other than being easy to set up. Its predecessor Friendster was too sluggish and GeoCities too complicated (and crushed by ads after the Yahoo takeover).
the problem is, just how far do the companies have to go before they start to 'push buttons'? kids are damn fickle, they also follow the crowd... unless another online haven pops up to fill the role of myspace where everyone else goes, then noone will bother to move. In fact, it is almost like myspace is so entrenched as _the_ social networking site, that noone will ever be able to replace it entirely in the foreseeable future. unless, of course, they make it pay to play then it will die faster than something that dies really fast.
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if orkut (i dont know about this, ive never been invited) went the way of myspace and started heavily recruiting profiles made along with the tight integration of every other google service, then i could see people moving over to that. but its been out for a while now, and noone that i know uses it. nor do you ever hear people in restaraunts talking about it like you do myspace. with the current recruitment model it cant replace myspace.
facebook.com seems to have a way better interface and integration than myspace, and it is slowly growing people profiles as they pass through college and keep thier accounts. but again, what makes it good is the niche market for students (im not even sure if HS students can profile there) and the way that they keep non-.edu emails from registering. again, it will never replace myspace for the 25+ somethings, but for college students it is used pretty much a lot more than myspace (where people seem okay with posting more personal information there).
i cant comment on friendster or linkedin or whatever else there is out there. unless someone recommends them to me or i see the network through random surfing, then i dont really care.