“From social net­work to social enter­tain­ment prod­uct“

Robert Scoble inter­views Mike Jones, CEO, MySpace. High­lights include:

MySpace is focus­ing pri­mar­ily on the under-35 crowd. The new MySpace prod­uct is about social enter­tain­ment, around TV and movies. You cre­ate a per­son­al­ized stream of enter­tain­ment around you by con­nect­ing to your favorite movies, TV shows, and celebrities.

MySpace had to real­ize that they can­not win the social net­work­ing space, even while the web is becom­ing more social. How­ever, they wanted to become the best at deliv­er­ing an enter­tain­ment expe­ri­ence. The Face­book Con­nect / Face­book Sync part­ner­ship grew out of this shift in focus.

GoogleTV, Apple TV, Boxee Box are chang­ing how con­sumers expe­ri­ence enter­tain­ment. How does this affect MySpace?

Today a third of MySpace’s audi­ence is on mobile, so they are releas­ing appli­ca­tions on mobile and GoogleTV palt­forms, to engage users in social media experiences.

New Topic Pages pay atten­tion to trend­ing con­tent on the web, includ­ing from Twit­ter and other Open Social plat­forms. We will also bring in clips and con­tent from Hulu, YouTube, and other plat­forms based on your preferences.

There aren’t many brands on the web that have made such a big shift. It’s an even big­ger chal­lenge when you are a plaftorm that has relied on peo­ple cre­at­ing much of the con­tent and get­ting so famil­iar with the expe­ri­ence.

Key learn­ings from this change?

They’ve noticed that by mak­ing these changes, lag­gards are becom­ing more engaged. Another thing is that allow­ing peo­ple to select their enter­tain­ment choices, engage­ment goes up. Also, a cura­tor audi­ence is ris­ing, and the new MySpace makes it eas­ier for them. Finally, the mobile expe­ri­ence is cru­cial to an impor­tant and grow­ing num­ber of users.

robert scoble, mike jones, myspace, leweb, leweb10