MySpace is number one, having seen a whopping 367% increase in audience during the period. The figures from Nielsen/NetRatings for April showed that, collectively, the top ten social networking sites grew by 47% year-on-year with an unduplicated unique audience of 68.8 million, reaching 45% of active web users. When Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation paid $580m (&£309m) for the youth site last year, many media analysts were trying to figure out how the traditional media owner intended to derive value out of a service which, while immensely popular with youths, could as easily be this season’s cool thing.īut the thing about the new online consumer media properties, which have earned the moniker Web 2.0, is that they allow the (mostly young) consumer to have as much responsibility as the big media owner for creating these sites’ “stickiness factor” with the users’ own postings of funny videos, interesting photos and opinionated blogs for example. Running through the site, it is easy to see how social networking sites like MySpace are evolving into a lot more than mere pages for young girls and boys to post mobile phone camera shots of themselves. Sure enough, the MySpace page featured pictures, profiles and songs that could be streamed online alongside information about the band’s upcoming gigs. “We’ve been able to promote ourselves and get gigs without the need for professional promoters.”
“It’s a great way to get people to come and see the band and pass the word round to their friends on MySpace,” she said.
My “old” media world of pop music had intersected with my newer world of all things digital media, and I asked if it was important to have a MySpace address on the CD for an up-and-coming artist.
My ignorance of the industrial trance pop scene aside, I really got interested when, after offering me the CD, she said: “Or you could check out our MySpace page.” I feigned knowledge of the said sub-genre and within seconds she had fished out a CD for me to listen to and tell her what I thought. Marketers may fear their lack of control over social networking sites, but old media foxes intend to target, and derive value from, such valuable audiences
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