Anyway, I read about it again in Fast Company, and I get the feeling that this is a very well orchestrated PR-move, but that they don’t sound convincing. To me anyway.
They’ve changed their pitch from “social network” to “social portal”, which is in itself promising. If anything would get me off Facebook, it would be a service that aggregated all my social feeds, including Facebook. And “social portal” sounds something like that. But then I read on, and I don’t get a clear picture about what they’re up to. It seems to me that while Facebook focuses on user experience (UX), discussions at MySpace revolve around how to monetize best off their traffic. I get the same ego-centric vibe that I get from a lot of brand managers. No offence. But focusing on the user is the zen of social media.
Speaking of UX by the way, check out Zeus Jones post on UX Is The New Account Planning.
So while MySpace is re-launching, I remain sceptical. I hope I’m wrong about this. I would love to see MySpace rise to glory once again.
I do, on the other hand, see signs of smoke on the horizon. A possible challenger to Facebook. And I’m talking, of course, about Google. Their coming social iGoogle initiative will build upon Open Social and I imagine it being just that kind of aggregating portal that I’m hoping for. That would have the power to bring down Facebook by making it better UX-wise (Facebook that is), meaning that it would actually strengthen Facebook, while taking away it’s user interface monopoly. Meanwhile Google could also add the best feeds and functionality from every other social service you could possibly wish for. Are you following me?
The one remaining strenght of MySpace if this would happen is MySpace music. At least until Google buys Spotify. But that deserves a separate post.