What internet space logged more page views in August (9.4 billion) than Google? That would be MySpace.com — the upstart web company that is part Friendster, part Blogger, part MP3.com, part craigslist. "The idea," MySpace founder Tom Andersson told Wired Magazine, "was that if it was a cool thing to do online, you should be able to do it on MySpace."
Brick and mortar traditionalist’s eyes glaze over. Blah, blah, blah. Haven’t we seen all this before? Didn’t that bubble already burst?
No, we haven’t; no, it didn’t. 9.4 billion page views in August. 3.5 million new users every month. 12% of all advertising on the web. $30 - $40 million gross sales in 2005. With just 125 employees… It looks like News Corps got quite a bargain when in acquired MySpace’s parent company for $580 million earlier this year.
Yes, but what does it do?
In a word, MySpace disintermediates traditional marketing and promotion strategies — along with their big budgets, big salaries, big overheads and mixed results. The 400,000 MySpace pages that belong to music acts — that’s right four hundred thousand — are built around free music downloads, direct communication between fans and bands and selling cool stuff when and how people want to buy it. The result is a growing middle class in pop music — artists whose customer focus means they can quit their day jobs and make a modest living doing what they love.
News Corp. isn’t the only media company waking up to the consumer phenomena behind MySpace.
"This generation is growing up without having ever watched programmed media,"
the head of new media and strategic marketing at Interscope told Wired. "They don’t think in terms of the album, and they don’t think in terms of a TV schedule. They think in terms of TiVo, P2P, AOL, and of course MySpace. We’re just going to have to adapt."
No kidding. As General Eric Shinseki often reminded his command, "If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance a lot less."
- You remember inertia: Bodies at rest tend to remain at rest and bodies in motion tend to continue in uniform motion, unless acted on by a disruptive force. Is your company in the grip of inertia? One way or the other, how do you know?
- If your business stationary when it should be moving — or moving in the wrong direction — what disruptive force can you bring to bear? At what cost?
- What will it cost if you do nothing?
