MySpace Said to Hold Ad Talks With Microsoft, Yahoo, Google

Bloomberg / Business Week

 

News Corp.’s MySpace, seeking to replace a search advertising contract with Google Inc. that expires in August, has held talks with Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., according to a person familiar with the company’s plans.

Any deal would carry a substantially lower price than the $900 million Google agreed to pay in 2006 to place search ads within the social-networking site, a person with knowledge of the discussions said. MySpace also remains in talks with Google about extending their partnership, the person said.

MySpace has struggled to maintain ad revenue during an exodus of users to Facebook Inc. and the departure of key executives. Bought in 2005 for $580 million in cash, MySpace lost its status as the world’s top social-networking site in 2008. News Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch said last year that the site would fall short of traffic commitments to Google, lowering income on that deal by $100 million in 2009.

“We’re currently talking to multiple providers across the many facets of search to bring our users the best possible search experience in a social environment,” said Tracy Akselrud, a spokeswoman for Beverly Hills, California-based MySpace, who declined to name specific companies.

Microsoft is looking to boost users and ad revenue for its 13-month-old Bing search engine, which claimed 12.1 percent of searches in the U.S., compared with Google’s 63.7 percent, according to data tracker ComScore Inc. Microsoft has forged a separate agreement to handle searches on Yahoo’s site -- a deal that’s scheduled to take effect by December.

Pete Wootton, a spokesman for Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, declined to comment on negotiations with News Corp. May Petry, a spokeswoman for Yahoo in Sunnyvale, California, and Jane Penner, a spokeswoman at Mountain View, California-based Google, also declined to comment.

MySpace Co-President Jason Hirschhorn left in June, becoming the most recent high-level executive to depart the business. He had taken the co-president role in February, after Owen Van Natta stepped down as CEO.

MySpace Promises Users Simpler Privacy Settings

cNet

 

In a letter to users, MySpace's co-president Mike Jones on Monday outlined the company's stance on privacy and its place within social networking, as well as detailing what he calls a "simplified" version of the social network's privacy settings that will roll out to users in the next few weeks.

The announcement comes just three weeks after Facebook's F8 conference, where Facebook introduced, and immediately implemented new privacy settings that have drawn user and media ire for making profile information too public. Facebook's new system has also drawn criticism for being overly complex.

Jones said the new system will continue to give users the same three tiers of privacy for each aspect of their profiles that they have right now (public, friends only, and public to users over the age of 18). The key difference from Facebook's approach, however, is that the toggle to change all the settings will be contained in one switch. Jones also said that users who are currently using the "friends only" option will keep their settings without having to opt in or out of anything.

"While MySpace at its core is about discovery, self expression and sharing, we understand people might want the option of limiting the sharing of their information to a select group of friends," Jones said. "We respect our users' desires to balance sharing and privacy, and never push our users to an uncomfortable privacy position."

Jones went on to say that the the company's goal has remained the same throughout its existence, and that users shouldn't worry about changes in privacy affecting information or content they've uploaded to MySpace. "MySpace's core value of allowing self-expression and representation of yourself remains true, without the fear that your unique contribution to MySpace will be unknowingly used for an alternative purpose," Jones said.

MySpace Strives To Recapture Its Focus On Music, Entertainment

From the Wall Street Journal

A new executive team at MySpace is trying to reignite the brand by focusing on areas like music, videos and games as users abandon the social-networking site for cooler destinations.

MySpace, which is holding a conference this week for its global ad-sales staff, needs to lure visitors back and kick-start advertising revenue, ad executives say. Research firm eMarketer estimates U.S. ad spending on the site will be $495 million this year, down 15% from $585 million in 2008.

The basic challenge is similar to the one facing big Internet companies, such as Time Warner's AOL and Yahoo, that are under pressure to reinvent themselves for fickle audiences.

"I've been in the Internet business for 15 years. There's always the new, new thing," says Jason Hirschhorn, the company's chief product officer. "Everybody plateaus at some point. The ones that remain remain relevant with their user base."

In a strategy shift, MySpace is striving to become an online hangout for people to connect with friends over entertainment content, whether it's the new Pearl Jam album, blogs from celebrities like British pop singer Lily Allen or a karaoke contest for the Fox musical comedy "Glee."

MySpace says ramping up its technology initiatives to create new products that let users share such content with friends is an essential part of its strategy.

MySpace's online-hangout push marks an effort to focus its offerings and differentiate itself from rival Facebook. As an entertainment site, MySpace would compete for ad dollars with a broader group of Web sites, including online video sites like Google's YouTube and Hulu, a joint venture of General Electric's NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney. It also would compete against music sites like Pandora and portals like AOL, which is also trying to reinvent itself with a push to create content.

"This is not an all-things-for-everybody portal," Mr. Hirschhorn says. "This is a social entertainment experience."

Fox and MySpace are owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

To take its new pitch to Madison Avenue, MySpace has hired former MTV executive Nada Stirratt as chief revenue officer, responsible for overseeing global ad sales. Ms. Stirratt, 44 years old, most recently worked as executive vice president of digital ad sales at Viacom's MTV Networks.

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, who was hired nearly six months ago to revive the site and has since turned over almost the entire executive suite, introduced Ms. Stirratt to staff this week at the sales conference, during which executives outlined the company's strategy.

Although MySpace drew an audience of 64.2 million unique U.S. visitors in August, that figure is down 15% from the same period a year earlier, according to comScore. Facebook drew 92.2 million unique U.S. visitors in August, more than double the number a year earlier.

Like her rivals, Ms. Stirratt will have to address broader, looming questions about the viability of social-networking sites as a place for advertising.

Marketing via social-networking sites isn't simply about buying ads on a page. It requires that marketers interact with users on the sites, says Greg Smith, chief operating officer at Neo@Ogilvy, a digital ad agency owned by WPP. "It requires a whole new way of thinking," he says.

MySpace declined to make Ms. Stirratt available to comment.

Ms. Stirratt, who earlier in her career directed sales at Internet-ad company Advertising.com, has a reputation on Madison Avenue as a savvy businesswoman who understands the technical side of the Internet business but also knows how to build creative ad sponsorships that attract dollars from big brand advertisers.

So far, most of the developments under the new MySpace management team have focused on cleaning up the underlying technology of the site and making it easier for visitors to use. Users previously couldn't upload a photo to blog posts, for instance.

MySpace also is reconfiguring search technologies for the site and has removed features that didn't fit into its new strategy, including weather, jobs and classifieds. In the past few months, it has released features including a fresh homepage for its music site and a feature that connects to Twitter, the microblog site.

Further developments are likely to center on building technologies that let users more easily share entertainment.

Ad executives say that MySpace Music has registered some success, drawing 24.8 million unique U.S. visitors in September, up 24% from a year earlier, but they say they have yet to see major changes across the board for MySpace.

MySpace lost its way over the years as it got caught up in a race with Facebook, launched disparate initiatives and let technology and new-product developments lag, ad executives say.

Those missteps cost MySpace much of its buzz on Madison Avenue and its organic search marketing, says Shiv Singh, vice president and global social-media head at Razorfish, the digital-ad agency owned by Publicis Groupe.

"Marketers want to align their brands with the newest and the greatest. Currently, that is Facebook and Twitter," Mr. Singh says.

"Hardly a day goes by without a client asking me, 'What should I do with Facebook?' I don't get anywhere near as many questions about MySpace," he adds.

"They are not hiding from the challenges," says Doug Neil, senior vice president of digital marketing at GE's Universal Pictures, which recently bought promotions on MySpace for its films "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" and "Couples Retreat." He adds: "But can they re-steer the ship?"