New Myspace deserves optimism (+Myspace invites) 403

Yes, the new Myspace is here, and has this been exactly 3 years ago this piece of news will have been received with so much more enthusiasm. Here’s the intro video from Myspace:

Don’t say I didn’t try to excite you. Whether or not I succeed is another story. But if you weren’t wetting your pants like you would have if only this revamped Myspace make its debut 3 years ago, I can sympathized. We’re all awash in this social media fatigue and the way it’s heading, we thought we were on a path to recovery.

Until the new Myspace makes its arrival.

I’m bullish on social media. I think social is to modern marketing what website banners used to be to the internet itself. Facebook, love it or hate it, is here to stay for a solid 10 years and who knows how many more years after. Google Plus too.

But the same optimism doesn’t apply to every other thing on the web that has a tagline that can interpreted as “basically we’re just facebook but we have something more”. The same optimism also doesn’t apply to the majority of “social” apps out there whom only social functionality is “share this on [insert popular social media sites here]“. Sadly enough, we still have many developers that fail to register the fact that a tiny bit of API implementation doesn’t makes a social app. At most, it’s an app with social integration baked into it.

Back to Myspace. I know, you’re thinking I’m bias — and I’m not denying that — but here are 5 things the new Myspace doesn’t do, and why the new launch of Myspace is worth a bit of optimism after all.

1. It doesn’t try to be everything.

Important point if you ask me. Too many social media sites that was started only to miserably fail after a halfhearted missed to see this point.
The new and relaunched Myspace is careful to distinguish itself from the start and it certainly has make a strong case for itself in the way it is positioned. It knows where to craft its own niche and avoid the undeniable huge but long-past-matured market already dominated by Facebook, Twitter and Google+. To some extent, you may even say this fatigued market, the broadest group of audience is already taken by Team Zuckerberg and that Twitter, G+ and Pinterest are far behind in that respect.
That’s why I think niche communities like Dribbble, Steam and DeviantArt, or to a certain degree, LinkedIn, are there to stay for a long time. They didn’t try to be everything. Same goes for the new Myspace, a relaunch that seeks out artists, bands, musicians, performers and filmmakers as its base community. Well played, Myspace.

2. It doesn’t try to claim supremacy.

“So, this new myspace is going into the social media realm and reclaim its once glorious leadership position? Surely this must be interesting and disruptive?”
If that is your question please watch the video again and pay attention to the many subtle signs of Myspace playing itself down from being perceived as “the next social network” meant to shaken up the playing field. It didn’t want to. Myspace was very sincere in conveying the message through the demo video, and the biggest clue to this re-positioning is perhaps in its sign-up process at the beginning of the video. At hindsight, integrating the login with existing sites like Facebook and Twitter might seem reasonable, but I bet it was a very difficult decision at the beginning dealing with the temptation of building a community independent of Facebook or for that matter any other sites.

3. It doesn’t start off with nothing.

Another common pitfall that was too often overlooked is how difficult it is to pull a social media site off the ground without first having formed an active group of users to support it. This trait, the first population of that particular community, is present in just about any social media sites that eventually got it big. With Facebook, it is Harvard. Twitter first became a popular outlet for journalism and first-adopter brands. GitHub and Sourceforge has dedicated and highly motivated programmers and developers (On the GitHub blog, the team would announce high profile GitHubbers that have recently joined, typically titled in the format: “___” is a GitHubber).
The original Myspace? Well, Myspace has always been popular with local bands, musicians, and art performers.

4. It doesn’t resembles “yet another”

The redesign of Myspace is anything but incremental. Folks assigned to the new Myspace project should really be proud of themselves for breaking out from the usual patterns of how social media communities look, interact and behave.

5. It doesn’t come across as being too commercial

There’s no better example than Facebook itself. In the past three months I have heard moans and complaints from about every person I met on my way to office about Facebook being too greedy and how it’s notorious behavior is causing great distress to community managers and brand owners themselves. The biggest group of victim ever since Facebook went public and is pressured to take this excessively commercial route is arguably the local brands and interest groups that just can’t afford to meet the demands of Facebook anymore.
“Guess what? Facebook is becoming too commercial and we can’t spread our message across without incurring all kind of costs anymore. Let’s get outta here and leave Facebook for the big brands that can afford it.”

Where do these local brands and interest groups go to, you ask?

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