From Yahoo News: Friendster logged 703,000 visitors to its site in April, a 15 percent drop from the year-ago month and the average visitor spent 14 minutes on the site that month, down 65 percent year over year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. By contrast, MyPlace boasted 8.2 million visitors in April, who spent an hour and 23 minutes on the site.
As Friendster CEO, Sassa has tinkered with offering horoscopes, news headlines and Weblogs to boost the amount of time users spend on the site, a notion called “stickiness” in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.
Tinkered being the operative word. Site looks much better than it first did but who cares about horoscopes? News headlines? Both features are staples of my.yahoo.com and have been for years. Trailblazing is what is needed not replication.
Look at the configuration screenshot, that’s only one of about 3 screens full of customization options on MySpace.
8.2 million visitors! That’s an incredible number. 83 minutes isn’t as sticky as I would have thought. Heck, I spend 30 minutes at Myspace yesterday customizing my blog and I didn’t even send any hout outs to my peeps. I’m sure people deep into customizing their pages, writing their blogs and actively writing testimonials and networking their bands spend a lot more than 83 minutes a month.
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Uh, 83 minutes. Who cares? This feels like the late 90s again when everyone is in a mad dash for eyeballs. Sure, there’s ad model for CPM. But PPC (performance based pricing) is really where its at. But how valuable are these impressions on MySpace really? I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a minimal impact on a user buying a product.
As a MySpace user I’m highly unlikely to click on one of the ads I see. They’re simply not relevant. And I seriously doubt the impact branded ads are having on my purchase plans.
Are you telling me that if Myspace sold Beck’s new CD in a banner at at a reduced price that the ad wouldn’t draw you in the least bit? (substitute your favorite artist). I think when Userplane get their ad network on Myspace and Friendster promoted that the quality of the ads goes up that their relevance will increase. The effectiveness of ads depends a lot on the context. I love the ads at boingboing.net, they are perfectly aligned with the readership. Myspace ads are similar. As opposed to sites that join a network and get ads with nothing to do with their visitor demographics.
I believe that a branded ad could prove effective if it is relevant. I think that MySpace’s focus on music & entertainment could be relevant to its user base. But I don’t see ads strictly limited to these topics.
I’m a 29 yr. old male. I decided for giggles to surf MySpace and look at the ads displayed to me. I see the following:
* Banner ad about breast cancer
* Banner ad for True.com (sorry I’m on MySpace. Not interested)
* Banner ad for Alzheimer’s
* Google-like ads for a limo service
* Ad for Jamster (a music service) (hmmm possible interest)
* Ad for monster.com
Many others that have no relevance to me. It’s obvious that people advertise just for the page views. This raises another point. I’m sure I’m not alone here. My eyes tend to glaze over the ad locations and go to the content I’m interested in.
Just because an ad shows up on a page doesn’t mean it even registered in a user’s brain. Now if you were to move the ad around the page a person would have to adapt to find the valuable content and be forced to look at some ads. This would make for a pooer interface and dissatisfied customers.
Unfortunately, advertisers in a lemming like mentality are paying for these impressions. And MySpace wanting to increase revenue will certainly not decline advertiser money if the content is not relevant to its users. No one is stopping to think that the emperor has no clothes.
In short, I think advertisers are overpaying and not receiving the value they perceive they are. There will be a fallout from this when the industry realizes this fact.
“…emperor has no clothes…”
>>>ibm thought no one would buy a pc
…when the average teen can be a global marketeer, through ebay, who CARES what the emperor is wearing…that’s so ….history…
…CONTENT is what sells…myspace sells the kids on the ability to “be famous with 5000 friends “…at least online… tom knew that in the beginning…. as soon as tom charges even a dollar a year, he will start his decline…
how about “be in your own movie” as a toy to sell to kids next? starting with a 5 minute short…a few photos, some CG, a little rendering. wow, everything from naughty naughty to live-on-stage, ….
hmm, we DO need better toys i think…
So history… hmm like 90s dementia. I think there is a place for services that give everyone a voice and allow people to market to each other.
However, I don’t feel banner ads are an effective way of doing this. I agree that MySpace is a valuable service. I just feel the business model is just not sustainable once advertisers wise up to its ineffectiveness.
Lets say they are charging $1.50 per thousand banner impressions. Has anyone noticed that they don’t rotate the ads? Each page is displaying some static ad. The average user on that site probably does 100 pageviews/month+ lets say a user is going to see your ad 20 times a month, who is going to pay $1.50 to be able to reach 50 unique visitors?
The stickiness or decline there of is due in part to the site being less of a novelty than it was just a year ago. I’m a big fan of MySpace, it has hit the nail on the head. It is the social network.
I’m a CollegeClub.com veteran, we were social networking before anyone knew what social networking was. We didn’t need online marketing to attract visitors, we didn’t need mass media to attract students. Viral growth was due in part to the fact that our site was the most amazing product available. It rivals many current sites, in features and functionality.
One component that our business had failed on was a solid revenue model. Millions of dollars of venture capital slipped through our hands and lined the pockets of the higher ups but little went into creating a revenue model that would allow the site to sustain itself on a model that didn’t depend on impressions, page views and ad space.
The concept was revolutionary it still is today. However, we’re seeing that Friendster may fall to the same fate. MySpace as cool as it is will soon follow suit.
It does feel like 2000 all over again.
Look, fortunes aren’t necessarily made overnight. A great website and marketing plan was all it took in 1999, today we have to expect more from businesses. I know a thing or two about turning a profit, if MySpace or Friendster would like some pointers, I’d be glad to pitch in a few hints.
I disagree 100% that this is 2000 all over again and that MySpace doesn’t have a revenue model.
Their draw is young music fans. Fans that buy t-shirts, CD’s concert tickets, Special Edition DVD’s and other related products and services that other sites never, or failed to, market to members and visitors.
MySpace is learning from the mistakes that sites such as MP3.com made when they failed to create a sustainable comunity around music and it’s culture. Today’s sites have many new features, technologies and hooks into mass culture as well as more demanding consumers to cater to. MySpace may falter down the line but they have a short-term winner on their hands. The lessons learned from MySpace can be filed under social networking version 2. There will always be a new version but to say they will lose members as Friendster has doesn’t jive with me given the trajectory, emerging business model and related businesses in the Intermix network. Friendster has no partner network to speak of.
Dave, would you care to elaborate on this much vaunted new business model? It’s easy to talk about the hot Gen X,Y, and Z demographic and how it can be marketed to. It’s a very different thing to make this actionable.
What specifically is MySpace doing that makes it’s marketing effort different?
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