It is the age of unlikely collaboration. Florence and Dizzee. Apple and the Beatles. Heston and Delia.
And now it seems, Myspace and Facebook.
Not content with a slick facelift, Myspace (or My_____) has consummated their marriage with Facebook by letting users sync their celeb and music ‘likes’ and interests and turning them into a Myspace profile.
They call this: “Mashup with Facebook”. Very cute.
It would be hard to argue against Myspace’s business strategy. After all, Facebook has grown to have 620m users globally, while Myspace, whose users number a mere 90m, has lost 19% of their regular users in the UK over the past year, according to the Guardian. Rupert Murdoch didn’t back the winner when he entered the social networking race buying Myspace for $580m (£360m) in 2005, so tapping into the area where Facebook have already succeeded is a necessary strategy to acquire users.
And Mashup comes just in time to derail the babe of the group. Ping, Apple’s social network, is only for iTunes users; closed off and aloof to those without the media player. Myspace, in contrast, has thrown itself open in submission.
The collaboration may make business sense, but where is the consumer need?
Myspace say the main benefits as a new user from Facebook are:
i. ‘Following’ updates from your favourite celebrities
ii. Moving your ‘likes’: favourite musicians and actors onto Myspace. Myspace have rolled out their ‘like’ button as well.
iii. Cross-posting status updates between Facebook and Myspace
iv. Receiving tailored recommendations based on your existing likes
v. Subscribing to regular entertainment content, mostly original and exclusive
vi. Connecting through friending and following
What benefits will Facebook migrants actually experience?
Consider the attitude of a user like me; Facebook is the lazy way to get in touch/keep in touch/see if people have had babies. I ‘like’ Omar Little, a character from The Wire. I don’t want constant updates from him. I ‘liked’ him in strange homage to the show, and I’m very happy with the little icon on my page that doesn’t do anything. Through the transition from Facebook to Myspace he turns into ‘Omar Akram’ whose music I’ve never heard of and sits uninvited on my Myspace ‘Mashup playlist’. This isn’t what I want.
This cock-up aside, Mashup for me is just another password for another way to social network. Never mind that there are sites that recommend songs you want to hear (Last FM), let you engage with artists away from their PRs (Twitter) and build up friends (well, Facebook). The one thing Mashup might win on is exclusive and original content (unless Youtube does something sneaky), but otherwise, what are the compelling benefits?
And so I throw it open to you.
What do you think?
Do you agree that Myspace have submitted to the Facebook dominatrix?
Or do you think this is more of a likely collaboration that was bound to happen?
To read more on Mashup with Facebook click here for the official announcement: Myspace
