MySpace to be renamed NewsCorpRevenueMakerSpace March 21, 2007
Posted by David Petherick in : Authority, Blogs, News, Online Communities , trackbackDigital Music News reports that MySpace has blocked artist/apparent pornstar Tila Tequila from posting an Indie911 Hoooka widget/MP3 store on her MySpace page, and apparently, MySpace is considering banning other third-party music widgets as well. MySpace makes revenue when a sale is made through the MyStore/SnoCap widget it promotes, but does not get a cent from the Indie911 Hooka widget.
One of MySpace’s strengths is that you can create and modify an online presence without needing to know any code, and can embed your other online presences into the MySpace page using all sorts of widgets - independent and official. If MySpace restricts and proscribes the content one can add, there will be a significant backlash from MySpace users, and MySpace has already allegedly removed blog content from Tila Tequila’s page.
Although I sense a certain amount of “news engineering” behind Tila’s promotion of Indie911, and I can understand MySpace wishing to maximise revenue - if the site restricts how content can be displayed on its pages, and perhaps more specifically, if it restricts what content can be displayed, then it is in trouble. If MySpace actually means NewsCorpApprovedRevenueandContentSpace, it will surely die.
We all know web sites like MySpace need a revenue model - but this could be a meltdown model, as there are a lot of independently minded people on MySpace who are all perfectly capable of moving their content to other networks, and, like Tila, to draw traffic to their their own independent blogs. In 2007, we can all publish our content freely (and through multiple channels) - it’s Web 2.0 guys - big media trying to make us think and act as they dictate is so very last century.
MySpace need to remember that the most important element of any social network is the content the members of that network create, and the sense of community that their interaction around that content creates. Try to control or curb that content, and you are taking away the very reason many will have joined the network in the first place - to express themselves freely. It will take about a New York Second for a smart outfit to provide an “instant port” of your MySpace content onto another platform - let’s call it QuiteIndependent - and they will flourish.
Now, QuiteIndependent.com (URL is available, by the way) might be bought up in six months by the next NewsCorp, but by then, it’s likely that even NewsCorp will have learned, just like Microsoft, that if they want to make a profit, they can no longer do it by trying to shove competitors off their platform, stifling competition and innovation, controlling people, limiting their choices, and forcing them to use proprietary software that is only designed to make money. They have to be smarter than that. I hope that MySpace is clever enough to start hiring some smart new talent soon…
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