by Brian Solis
At yesterday’s Web 2.0 Summit, and as widely reported on Techmeme, Myspace made some pretty powerful announcements during the evening dinner/keynote.
For a moment attendees actually stopped talking about Facebook – if only just for a moment.
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch ran the news ahead of the launch thanks to advanced, and incredibly useful, briefing notes that were distributed to attending journalists.
Photo Credit: TechCrunch
Here’s the summary of the Q&A discussion featuring CEO Chris DeWolfe and none other than Rupert Murdoch, and hosted by John Batelle:
MYSPACE CONFIRMS CONTRACTS
?Chris (co-founder and CEO of MySpace) confirm that he and Tom Anderson (co-founder and President) have renewed their contracts and will continue their respective roles within MySpace/ News Corp for two years.
MYSPACE CONFIRMS NEAR TERM DEVELOPER PLATFORM
?Original openness and personalization of the MySpace community was integral to the company?s success, MySpace helped develop the widget eco-system and it made the site a more fun, customizable experience.
?Facebook believes the industry i?s embracing the idea of openness is largely a good thing for users and therefore will formalize relationships with the developer community and roll out a new platform in the coming months.
Will this be the next F8, we’ll see. But as we all can agree, Myspace and Facebook really are completely different cultures and both can flourish apart from each other.
?MySpace’s strategy includes:
1.) Launching a catalog of all widgets & tools available on MySpace
2.) Making industry standard APIs available through a new platform where developers can try new things in a sandbox environment
3.) Users will participate in an opt-in beta test program to determine usability
4.) Users will vote and ultimately determine which of these widgets get tightly developed into MySpace
5.) MySpace will formally introduce the best ones into the community with highly developed integration
SKYPE PARTNERSHIP
?This week, MySpace announced a partnership with Skype to empower its 110 million active global users with voice capabilities.
?The announcement unveils MySpaceIM with Skype, a new product that integrates MySpace?s popular IM client?currently the world?s fastest- growing IM platform with more than 25 million installed users?with Skype?s voice-calling capability. (Product available in November)
EVOLUTION OF MYSPACE MUSIC?SONY BMG
?This week MySpace announced a licensing pact? with SONY BMG ENTERTAINMENT, as the company notes, is ?a key step in the evolution of the MySpace Music platform.
?The deal calls for MySpace and SONY BMG to share in sponsorship and advertising revenues, underscores both organizations? commitment to building new business models that benefit artists and consumers alike.
?Under the terms of the deal, SONY BMG will license music videos, select audio material, and other content from its extensive artist roster and will make the content available on its artists? MySpace profile pages. MySpace and Sony BMG will share in sponsorship and advertising revenues generated from the music videos and profile pages. Additionally, MySpace will work with SONY BMG to promote the music company’s artists throughout the site.
SF OFFICE OPENING
?SF office soft launched this week over in our neck of the woods -the ?SOMA district, on 2nd street and Brannan.
?Half of the company’s current employees are engineers and they are looking for 50 new engineers and plan to grow upwards of 200 over time.
?According to a spokesperson, “The Bay Area is pulsating with innovation and disruptive ideas?. We want to be closer to that action. We are doubling our workforce in the next year, hiring new developers, engineers, and programmers to help bring our full product pipeline to life.”
GROWTH
?MySpace is currently operational and completely localized in more than 20 international markets. They reportedly have another 10 on the way including Russia, India and Poland.
?MySpace is the #1 social network in Europe.
?MySpace currently adds 300,000 new users each day and it?s the most trafficked site in the United States.
?They company currently employs approximately 700 global MySpace employees and it plans to hire another 700 this year.
NEWS CORP/ MYSPACE ACQUISITION ANNIVERSARY
October 17th, 2007 is the two year anniversary of the News Corp acquisition of MySpace. ?When News Corp originally acquired MySpace, the company had 10 million unique users?. MySpace currently has 110 million active global monthly users.
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