At the Web 2.0 Summit a couple weeks ago, Owen Van Natta, CEO of MySpace, told the audience that “I really don’t view Facebook as a competitor.” It’s funny because absolutely every quote from the company in the press over the past couple weeks involves a differentiation from Facebook, and the more they discuss how they’re different, the more they appear to be a competitor. It’s an unfortunate truth for the company which missed its minimum traffic levels last quarter, costing the company $100 million.
Today’s quote from News Corp’s digital officer Jonathan Miller was that Facebook “is about what people are up to” whereas MySpace “is about what people are into”. Rather than completely turning the company around, executives at MySpace appear to be doing everything in their power to continue it’s competition with Facebook. For example MySpace ID, which the company is considering rebranding, “is focused on socializing content” around the web.
Isn’t that what Facebook Connect does though? Who is going to use MySpace as their primary identity service when they aren’t using it anymore? The real issue is that MySpace continues to speak in abstract terms and push forward on products that compete with Facebook rather than make a big gamble on completely redefining the site. With traffic continuing to tumble there are few things to suggest that a turnaround is in fact at hand.
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