Murdoch's MySpace Now the Most Accessced Service on the Web -- Social Networking Now the Biggest "New Thing"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: July 12, 2006 9:44:44 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Murdoch's MySpace Now the Most Accessced  
Service on the Web -- Social Networking Now the Biggest "New Thing"
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com

[Note:  This item comes from friend John McMullen.  DLH]

From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com>
Date: July 12, 2006 4:20:15 PM PDT
To: "johnmac's living room" <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: Murdoch's MySpace Now the Most Accessced Service on the Web  
-- Social Networking Now the Biggest "New Thing"

(johnmac -- Today, on NPR, I heard a discussion of MySpace with the  
author of the following Wired article. The discussion occured because  
a research outfit just released statistics saying that MySpace is now  
the most accessed spot on the World Wide Web. The author of the  
piece, Spencer Reiss, called the Social Networking evidenced by  
MySpace the "most disruptive social happening since MTV" There are  
now 80 million subscribers to the free MySpace Service. Another  
social networking  site is Orkut, affilated with Google. Orkut, which  
is by invitation only (anyone wishing a gmail or an Orkut invitation  
may send me an e-mail), has a great variety of topics or  
"communities", including many hi-tech, business, philosophy,  
religion, and literature -- I did not find that level of discussion  
on MySpace.)

From Wired Magazine -- <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/ 
murdoch.html>

His Space
Twilight of the media moguls? Not for this guy. With the $580 million  
purchase of MySpace, News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch is betting he  
can transform a free social network into a colossal marketing machine.
By Spencer Reiss

Perched on the edge of a bright white power sofa on the  
supernaturally quiet eighth floor of the News Corporations global  
headquarters, the last thing Rupert Murdoch looks like is a fire-eyed  
revolutionary. Starched cuffs. Courtly manner. A month past his 75th  
birthday. But then he starts talking. To find something comparable,  
you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of  
mass media  which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old  
world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away  
from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite.  
Now its the people who are taking control. And hes smiling.

Hold on a minute. Rupert Murdoch is the media elite. His Sixth Avenue  
office, lined with shelves devoted to dead-tree properties like  
Londons The Sun and muted video monitors tuned to news channels  
including News Corp.s Fox and rival CNN, sits squarely within  
jaywalking distance of NBC, CBS, Time Warner, McGraw-Hill, and  
Viacom. But these days, midtown Manhattans valley of old media  
dinosaurs is besieged by a Cambrian explosion of digitally empowered  
life-forms: podcasters, bloggers, burners, P2P buccaneers, mashup  
artists, phonecam paparazzi. Viewers are vanishing, shareholders are  
in revolt, advertisers are Googling for the exit.

Twilight of the moguls, right? Not for the T. rex of mass culture.  
Were looking at the ultimate opportunity, Murdoch says. The Internet  
is medias golden age.

Of course, someone juggling $60 billion worth of TV studios, printing  
presses, and broadcast satellites would say that. But Murdoch has  
been putting his money where his mouth is  and it is his money: His  
family controls almost a third of News Corp.s voting shares. Over the  
past year, he has spent nearly $1.5 billion on new-breed Internet  
companies, including online communities devoted to gaming, sports,  
and movies, plus a startling eruption of youthful energy known as  
MySpace. And he has put his lieutenants on notice: The days of top- 
down, force-fed, one-size-fits-all media are over. The new imperative  
is to deliver precisely what audiences want, when and where they want  
it.

How or even whether News Corp. can survive this cold dawn is an open  
question  Wall Street certainly has its doubts. But the man who built  
the worlds only truly global media company has a classically  
entrepreneurial answer. Well figure it out, he says, flashing his cat- 
that-ate-the-canary grin.

One of the great things about being a self-employed billionaire  
mogul  besides traveling in your own Boeing 737 and getting to play  
yourself on The Simpsons  is that you dont have to talk like a  
management consultant. News Corp. culture is famously seat-of-the- 
pants; managers who cant live by their wits quickly fall by the  
wayside. But more than that, Murdoch revels in spotting unfilled gaps  
and unmet needs. Everything weve ever done is about giving people  
choices, he says. The Net has a billion people looking for news,  
sports, and entertainment. Another billion are on mobile phones, and  
another couple of billion are coming up behind those. Thats a hell of  
a lot more people making choices.

Right, but how do you keep News Corp. at the center of their  
decisions? How do you produce planetary hits in a world of umpteen  
million YouTube videos? How do you find the next Bart Simpson if hes  
being drawn in someones garage?

Thats where the Internet comes in, specifically MySpace and the  
millions of young trendsetters who make it the most disruptive force  
to hit pop culture since MTV. This nonstop global block party of  
music, video, and hookups is starting to look like the most powerful  
mass-media launching pad ever invented. To take advantage of that  
power, though, Murdochs crew faces two challenges. The most immediate  
is to avoid doing anything that might interfere with the runaway  
growth that has already made MySpace the biggest aggregation of  
people on the Web. But thats just step one. Step two is to turn  
MySpaces teeming masses into a wholly new kind of media entity, an  
advertising, marketing, and distribution vehicle that gives News  
Corp. a hand on the steering wheel of popular culture worldwide.

Hi, this is Rupert Murdoch. Ross Levinsohn answered the phone, heard  
those words, and thought it must be a joke. It was January 2005, and  
Levinsohn, a 41-year-old veteran of CBS SportsLine.com and AltaVista  
who was running Fox Sports online operations, had never actually met  
with the big boss. Got time for a chat? Murdoch asked. Sure. When?  
How about now?

An hour later, Levinsohn had rustled up a shirt with a collar and was  
sitting across a table from Murdoch at an employee caf on the old Fox  
movie lot in Los Angeles, doing a core dump about new media.  
Levinsohn wondered whether he was about to be fired. Instead, two  
months later, Murdoch offered him an amazing new gig: Take whoever  
you want, go wherever you need, and come back with a strategy for  
making News Corp. a serious presence on the Net.

[snip]

Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>



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