Tag Archives: myspace

MySpace sold its soul to NewsCorp years ago, and both parties may have regretted that ever since. The ongoing overhaul of MySpace’s site and services maintain the company’s hopes towards regaining its world dominance, but that’s been the story of MySpace for over a year now. MSNBC points out the company’s need for faith-driven employees, with others speculating that MySpace would be better off as a stand-alone website. Yet a revelation of MySpace’s revamped site could incur that fired-up faith that the company’s management is looking for. Or not.

I haven’t seen the new designs yet, but they’re being described as more user-focused. Easing the use around the site itself, including new features that would play up to user requests for easy access to music and playlists, means that MySpace is hoping to retain the love of its current users, and even regain some of those lost to Facebook.

From the sound of it, MySpace is finally doing some of the things it’s been talking about doing for the past year or so. MySpace had big plans for its site, but got sidetracked with all its success. Instead of learning from the mistakes of those that came and went before it, MySpace trudged along in its own popularity, expanding new services instead of improving its interface. The only question now is whether or not it’s too late for MySpace.

Even as MySpace looks to return to its music roots, its sell-out to advertisers made its user features a second-hand by-product of the deals and partnerships it made with advertisers. When we began to see full-site wraps advertising Secret deoderant instead of highlighting up and coming musicians, we knew the days of MySpace as a music-centric service were over.

I only mention this to highlight the fact that MySpace’s return to its core competencies doesn’t ensure its future success. Still looking to replace or renew its hefty ad deal with Google, which expires this year, MySpace’s money-making potential is bound to drop significantly in the coming months. This leaves MySpace with even more drive towards seeking alternative revenue schemes, while also maintaining its dedication to its users.

While the upcoming features for the revamped MySpace aim to do just this, there are several other companies that have been vying for MySpace’s market share for some time. SoundCloud is one such service that is gaining traction, offering the music services for the likes of MySpace users, and nothing else. When it comes to creating a hub with the end goal of servicing its customers, it’s amazing what kinds of products you get as a result.

Of course, we wonder what else MySpace can do at this point. It still has a large user base, and functions largely as a destination site. Instead of becoming an online distribution channel for NewsCorp media, MySpace has missed out on many of the opportunities it set out to achieve several years ago, such as payment integration for a music-based marketplace, among other things. Friendster survived by shifting its focus to Asian countries, and eventually playing up some of its gaming capabilities as an online social hub. The necessity for seeking alternative revenue has that affect. It brings out the survival mode in many companies, and that may be exactly what happens to MySpace in the coming months.

Google and MySpace have forged a new deal, primarily for real-time search results. The search engine company has confirmed the rumors that the two companies have been in talks regarding an SEO deal, and Google will begin including MySpace content in its real time search results.

Despite issues between Google and MySpace in the past, MySpace may be able to provide some value still to the large search engine company. As Google looks to build out its real time search options, MySpace is being leveraged towards providing relevant and immediate search results for added context.

Real time search has largely turned to social media content for the past few months, highlighting social media’s ability to add another layer of context to th data we receive in the form of search results. For a given query, we can gain a certain level of instant gratification based on content published from user-generated sites such as MySpace, moving away from the validation process required by more trusted news sources. As the content from social media outlets is also rather plentiful, the ability to pull from all that time/date-stamped data has been a low-hanging fruit tempting search engines for quite some time.

Twitter helped to bring real time search into the mainstream, with Facebook and MySpace quickly following suit. For Google, the deal with MySpace means that the search engine can expand its real time search offerings, potentially improving the context behind such social searches. This goes along with many of Google’s other initiatives on the social front, including socially-oriented search results that now appear for signed in users. Along with Google Buzz and a few other social efforts, Google is clearly moving towards a more inclusive format regarding its real time search.

Whatever Google ends up doing with MySpace content for its real time search products, we’re likely to see something more useful than what other search engines have provided. Jumping head first into real time search has been something other search engines have done in the past year or so, while Google already has a founation upon which real time, socially-generated search results can be provided. Nevertheless, Google has had a harder time incorporating real time search into its established methods, especially when it comes to forging certain deals in order to access social media outlets.

Facebook has been another large database with a great deal of potential towards the real time search efforts of several search engines. For the time being, Microsoft has a better standing with Facebook regarding the use of its increasingly public interface towards real time and social search content. Google’s deal with MySpace may help overcome some of the shortcomings of its deal with Facbook, especially as it looks to stay competitive with the likes of Microsoft Bing.

For MySpace, the social network has been losing ground to Facebook for quite some time now. Having become a trend passed, MySpace has spent the past year or so rebuilding its company and its network. Returning to the basics of user-generated content and social networking, MySpace is also looking for a way to get back into the game. A real time search deal with Google may be a good outlet for MySpace, given its intentions towards its own marketing efforts.

Sourced from PR 2.0

This week, I was invited to speak at the Girls in Tech event in San Francisco as part of its evening discussing and exploring the nuances and opportunities defining and fueling Journalism 2.0.  I’ve supported GIT founder Adriana Gascoigne since the beginning and will always help the chapters that now exist around the world. It’s an important organization.

The evening was hosted at the San Francisco HQ of MySpace in the city’s South Beach district, which prior to their arrival, served as the early offices for the Social Media Club as it was forming.

To open the GIT New Journalism event, I was interviewed by my hero, and razor sharp witted Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal and All Things Digital. We discussed my new book “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations“  c0-authored with Dierdrre Breakenridge as well as the state of PR and social media marketing. Her questions were riveting and ensured that all guests stayed at the edge of their seats, including me, as we shared our honest and blunt assessments, predictions and solutions for an industry on the brink of either collapse or renaissance or both.

I think the audience would agree, the discussion begged for more time than we could possibly fit into the schedule. I’ll try to organize part two in the near future…

Shortly before our discussion, Kara shot one of her famous Flipcam interviews, which she shared in her recounting of the evening’s event and the discussions that defined it as well as in the Wall Street Journal Digital Network.

Thank you Kara!

I’ve included the video below…

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Sourced from PR 2.0, “Casting a Digital Shadow: With Social Media comes great responsibility…”

While speaking at the intimate and immensely valuable Zappos Insights event (Zappos Live), I shared thoughts of how the culture of any company or brand is as strong as the individual personification of it.

Everything starts and fortifies with you. Your actions and words online are indeed extensions to how people interpret, perceive, and react to the brand your represent. Concurrently, you also represent your personal brand – the digital identity that’s established through the collection of digital shadows you cast across the social web.

During my discussion, I asked those in the room to stop and think a bit about what it is they stand for, believe in, and aspire to become and whether or not the search results in Google, twitter.com/yourusername, Search.PeopleBrowsr.com or Collecta might reinforce their intentions or paint an unexpected and possibly surprising picture.

Everything we share online is indexed on the Web for years to come. When we Tweet, upload videos and pictures, post on blogs and comments, update our status on social networks, we cast a digital shadow that parallels our activities and mimics our convictions in real life. This digital shadow is strewn across the web only to be reassembled through the search pursuits of others – whether they’re prospective partners, employers, employees, customers, influencers, or stakeholders.

Curiosity Killed the Candidate?

A recent study performed by CareerBuilder.com validates the behavior of identity sleuthing and year over year patterns forecast subsequent ubiquity.

The professional network asked 2,500 hiring managers whether they search Facebook or other social networks to discover information about prospective employees. An astonishing, but not unexpected, 38-percent of respondents said yes. In comparison, only 22% of hiring managers acknowledged searching social networks in 2008.

You can bet that Google is part of the process as well.

In addition, 24%, which represents one in four hiring managers interviewed, conceded that the results contributed the decision to hire a candidate. 34% however, dismissed candidates based on what they uncovered.

This is a trend that’s years in the making however.

In 2006, a survey of 100 executive recruiters conducted by ExecuNet surfaced the shocking truth that Seventy-seven percent of recruiters reported using search engines to find background data on candidates. Of that number, 35 percent eliminated a candidate because of what they found online.

The reality is that that individuals who are currently employed are also at risk of losing their job based on their behavior on social networks and what they share online.

Earlier this year 16-year-old Kimberley Swann posted a series of updates that revealed her discontent with her menial tasks on Facebook:

“first day at work. omg (oh my God)!! So dull!!”

“all i do is shred holepunch n scan paper!!! omg!”

“im so totally bord!!!”

Two days after her posts hit the social web, she was fired.

British Airways staff created a webwide uproar when they called passengers “smelly and annoying” and Virgin Atlantic fired 13 for complaining about passengers on Facebook.

Of course, there’s also the widely discussed example of the “Cisco Fatty” incident.

Connor Riley took to Twitter after receiving a job offer from tech giant Cisco, “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

Moments later, Cisco employee Tim Levad saw the update and responded, “Who is the hiring manager? I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the Web.”

The incident evolved and unfolded on Twitter. She later apologized on her blog and noted that she already turned down the offer. Cisco remained supportive throughout the ordeal.

In the case of Philadelphia Eagles employee Dan Leone, he was fired after posting his unhappiness with the Eagle’s loss of player Brian Dawkins to the Denver Broncos, “Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver … Dam Eagles R Retarted!!”

The D.C. Department of Employment Services fired a contractor who worked with the city’s youth summer jobs program after a string of TMI Tweets that referred to his job location as “ghetto” and his ability to clock hours in without working:

“In america’s ghetto anacostia… If I get scared i will just yell chinese carry out! They will not shoot me.”

“thank goodness my boss is making things easy, he told me to pretend to do work so he can mark me down for hours.”

I think we’re all aware of the careless and reckless Dominos employees who posted a YouTube video that showed a cook disgustingly defiling the food designated for customer orders.

And, there is certainly no shortage of firings because of MySpace.

Non-tenured high school teacher Jeffrey Spanierman was fired after hosting an inappropriate MySpace page that contained nude photos of men, foul language and inappropriate conversations with students. He sued and later lost his case.

Two employees of Houstons Restaurant were canned when managers received access to information in a private MySpace group that divulged derogatory statements about managers, customers, and also private information about upcoming product knowledge tests. The two filed suit claiming invasion of privacy. Hillstone Restaurant Group, which owns the Houstons chain defended its decision with a statement to CNN, “This is not a case about ‘cyber-snooping,’ the First Amendment, or privacy. It’s about two staff members who were let go for unprofessional conduct, including disparaging comments about our guests, and sharing a product knowledge test before it was administered. This misconduct was voluntarily brought to light by a member of the online group.”

While we enjoy freedom of speech, we must still be mindful of what we publish and share. Even if it’s in a seemingly private and protected environment

And, it’s not just a crystal ball for employers. Everyone searches the names of those who either intrigue them or emerge as a potential contender for collaboration or interaction.

Why not? It’s only smart business to gather intelligence and research before an introduction or engagement.

Kaplan Test Prep released a report last year that indicated that one in 10 colleges and universities explore social networks and common search engines when considering aspiring students for admission.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this practice of investigating people will not dissipate. The only elements that will change are the increases in the total percentages of search queries performed by decision makers.

It’s not all bad news however. The truth is that the search experience related to you is defined by you. Acceptance of this reality represents half the distance to crafting a more strategic and effective representation of who you are and what you stand for online and in the real world.

Deleting your profiles is not the answer. Deleting offending material and updating your privacy settings, on the other hand, is a good place to start. The truth is however, that it takes more than editing what exists today. In order to truly shape our personal brands as they’re viewed remotely, from a distance, and without our explicit input, we must take the reins and contribute to its silhouette at the very least.

We are in control of the digital shadow that materializes when the spotlight is cast upon us.

Take this opportunity to showcase accomplishments, strengths and talents. Reinforce what it is you stand for as well as what moves you. In many ways your profiles and the material you share online contribute to a digital resume, whether you agree or disagree. It’s there, right now, talking about you, without your direction. Opportunities that may have presented themselves to us never materialized because of our digital shadows. So, do something about it. Just don’t lose who you are in the process.

Yes, we’re still human beings. Yes, we have fun. Yes, we do things we don’t want the rest of the world to know about.

Decide whom it is you’re trying to impress with your social profiles and updates and realize that answer may change over time. Just “think” about what it is you’re sharing and why before you upload to the public Web. Anything not conducive to the reinforcement of a strategic outward facing personal brand should be relegated to the private viewing of your bona fide, genuine social graph. Again, there are privacy settings within each social network and you govern who sees what. Let the privacy controls and the corresponding content serve as the church and state of your online persona.

There are benefits and consequences associated with each bit of content you share, even if they’re not immediately discernible.

And parents, it’s never to early or too late to help guide your children.

Start monitoring their online behavior as soon as they start spending significant time online. Actively Google them to assess the results. Help them create and craft content that serves as a placeholder for their identity now and in the future.

Who we are and who we want to be often reside at opposite ends, where the space between is distanced or narrowed by our actions, content and words.

What does your profile or search results say about you?

UPDATE: For those looking for a social network to help present your experience (other than LinkedIn), please true Resumebucket.

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The State of the Industry Panel at ad:tech San Francisco

L to R: Randall Rothenberg, Rishad Tobaccowala, Carol Kruse, Neil Ashe, Jeff Berman

ad:tech San Francisco drew over 12,000 attendees last week and had a well-documented events and party calendar on the ad:tech blog thanks to Steve Hall.

The State of the Industry Panel (presented by the IAB) was the best keynote of ad:tech San Francisco in my opinion:

It was informative, though-provoking, entertaining, and filled with quotable quotes. Most of all, the speakers were made comfortable by the personable moderator, Randall Rothenberg.

See below for highlights.

Moderated by:

• Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau

Panelists:

• Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Denuo Group and ad:tech Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
• Neil Ashe, President of CBS Interactive
• Carol Kruse, VP Global Interactive Marketing, The Coca-Cola Company
• Jeff Berman, President of Sales and Marketing, MySpace

The room started out empty. Within minutes, hundreds of attendees were seated.

Randall Rothenberg: Where are your companies investing in advertising?

Summarized answers from the panelists:

• Asia (Kruse)
• All digital properties (Ashe, Tobaccowala)
• All online media, especially search (testing brand vs. direct response)
• A focus on mobile
• We want to focus on understanding the whole person through using behavioral predictive analytics (Berman)

Rothenberg: What is the value and contribution of social media?  Is it  just PR hype or something else — a hybrid?

Summarized answers: Old models don’t make sense any more.  Social media is not campaign based, but requires ongoing communication.  The media objective of the past was about where to put advertising – now it’s find where the audience sticks.

Rothenberg: Can Social Media  be a part of a media plan – or is it rather “communications planning” or “influence planning”?

Summarized answers:  Social Media can’t be planned by campaign or by quarter.  It must be an ongoing plan. It has to be authentic, and it has to talk about what’s great, fresh, and trusted.  It’s not a media strategy – it’s a  service strategy, customer service, and product strategy;  it’s branding, not media.

Rothenberg: How does an agency incorporate Social Media then?

Summarized answers: You have to consider “non-working media” versus “working media”. What works and what doesn’t? Agencies have to start by being agnostic. They should have fewer campaigns, and reach more ecosytems. Take a “great creative idea” and take it across all media.  There is no way to coordinate accross multiple agencies.  The consumer is driving changes so fast that we’re all running to keep up.  The Chief Knowledge Officer will be sitting in the position of power.

Rothenberg: Have we boxed ourselves into direct response?  Or is there room for creativity or branding?

Summarized answers: Direct response metrics saddle us with a burden. One recurring theme heard often over the past day (at ad:tech) is that it’s all going to become one — both branding and direct response.  The focus on metrics was in order to get budgets approved. When it comes to building brand awareness, “nothing compares to television” for Coca-Cola.

Rothenberg: How much does creativity matter, compared to metrics?

Summarized answers: Creativity will matter even more. Creativity is not just pictures. Google search is getting more and more creative.  Has the definition of “the great idea” changed?  Or is the palette just larger now?  The end-user or consumer will make the great decision. They will have more decision making power. People choose with their hearts and use numbers to justify what they just did.

Rothenberg: Is content or channels more important?

Summarized answers: Tobaccowala said, “The hysteria of insecurity is now driving the industry.” The point is not which channels to use, but what content to put in the channels.

Conference Chair Drew Ianni wraps it up

ad:tech San Francisco also had great keynotes featuring:

• Jimmy Wales, CEO of Wikipedia
• Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu
• Steve Hayden, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Worldwide
• Pete Blackshaw, Executive VP of Digital Strategic Services at Nielsen Online
• John Travis, VP of Branding, Adobe
• Eric Feng, SVP of Audience and CTO, Hulu
• Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Global President, BabyCenter
• Joel Rubinson, Chief Research Officer, The Advertising Research Foundation

Thank-you to all of the conference organizers, notably Don Knox, Drew Ianni, Jeff Valentine, and Warren Pickett.

Marissa is the CEO and Co-founder of AD-Village.

Marissa also blogs at marissalouie.com and the BusinessWeek blog “Young Female Entrepreneur“.

Find her on Twitter: @malouie

Contact her at (510) 375-1941 or Email her at marissa@ad-village.com.