I can remember thinking about who might buy MySpace. I thought possibly Yahoo, they seemed to like anything that had the light scent of Web 2.0 or social aspects. I thought probably not Google, they would just turn their tech snob noses up to the poorly coded teen haven. Microsoft prefers to steal ideas than buy them. The NY Times bought About.com, but it’s doubtful that they would feel comfortable with something like MySpace. About.com is hardly a new site. I even thought about InterActive Corp, MySpace would fit well with Match.com, Expedia, Ask, and CitySearch. I have to admit that I didn’t think News Corp would consider it.
I don’t feel like I missed anything in my thinking. The fact is, I think it’s a dumb idea for them. I think News Corp was so desperate to invade the Web, they grabbed onto what they thought seemed like a great movement. Unfortunately, it really hasn’t been a smart move.
Who remembers Go.com? Evidently News Corp didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to Disney’s big failure. I can’t imagine how much money Disney lost on that fiasco. And they are still dealing with it as a legacy issue in the Web presence. News Corp has turned MySpace into their Go.com. Want to see more about 24, check out www.myspace.com/24. Want to check out more about American Idol, go to www.myspace.com/americanidol. Why do this? I guess they figure people will go there, and maybe sign up for a MySpace account. At least it has some sort of call to action, unlike Go.com. Or maybe parents will feel it must be safe to have their 12 year old daughter go sign up, since that nice Taylor Hicks is on there.
That leads us to their biggest issue, “sexual predators”. Of course if something online has anything to do with teens, there are “sexual predators”. I can remember back in 1996 you couldn’t mention AOL without hearing about the countess young girls kidnapped, snatched right from their inflatable furniture through their computer screen by “sexual predator”. Thank god we have Dateline to catch them. Here is the fact that we all know, there is no more chance of a child being victimized online than anywhere else. Of course you get weirdoes IM’ing them, but most systems let you just block someone, or even not show you to people who are not on your list. And yes, if they go into a chat room, they might be chatted up by some perv, but only if they participate in the chat. I agree that people should teach their children to be safe online, and they should monitor their usage. But to blame MySpace for some 14 year old girl who meets up with a 19 year old guy who attacks her, is like blaming the mall if she met him there. The problem with News Corp is that they do not have the ability to tell people to be reasonable. The fact is that this problem has existed since the beginning of the Internet, and now MySpace has been told to solve it. So they hire a “safety czar” Hemanshu Nigam who just sits there shrugging his shoulders with the rest of the online world. Let me save Nigam some time, there is no solution, at least nothing MySpace can do without losing all their members. Create some videos and tutorials for kids to watch about online safety, they don’t need to be that well done because they will just be ignored anyway, and keep asking people their age. Anything more sever than that, like the measure they have already put in place to block communication between members based on age, and you will just be damaging the community that you are trying to foster.
I won’t dwell much on the idea of profitability, or a “business model” for MySpace. It seems unfair to single them out when so many other dot coms don’t bother with that either. But, they should probably think about how to make some money of this thing. They may also want to see about trying to upgrade that crap code. I cannot believe that thing is still running on ColdFusion. The sites code reminds me of John Candy’s rental car in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I’m just amazed it’s still running, the fact that it’s on the highway is just mind blowing. I would have loved to been a fly on the wall in News Corps’ Web devision when they were told they are putting all this stuff on MySpace.com. They must have freaked.
Well, that’s my rant on why News Corp shouldn’t have purchased MySpace. But if you really want to hear something strange, ask me who I think should buy YouTube.
