Posted by Kevin Skobac, Interactive Media Supervisor, Draftfcb New York
As Facebook continues to take over the world and Twitter continues to own the press, older social networks are struggling to find their identities and their position in the market. Early entrants into the social networking space MySpace and Hi-5 are no longer competing to be the main social-net in people's lives, rather they're refocusing on Entertainment content. For MySpace that means Music, and for Hi-5 that means games; in both cases, the early returns look good.
MySpace: About a year ago, MySpace launched a streaming music service MySpace music that allows users to create playlists and listen to music online for free. Now MySpace is pushing hard to bolster this offering by acquiring popular music discovery tool iLike in August and announcing yesterday that they're now adding a full music video archive. MySpace knows they've lost the profile race to Facebook, but they're quickly cementing themselves as the go-to place for music content. According to comScore, their unique audience numbers are down 7MM Sept'08 - Sept'09, but MySpace Music has increased by 50% during that same time period. And more importantly it's easier to to develop ad-products around music consumption and sharing because advertisers prefer professional content to UGC content.
Hi5: Though Hi5 never became a huge hit in the U.S., it's maintained a sizable worldwide audience. Now, rather than sit by and watch their audience run to Facebook, Hi5 is building its future around social gaming. For the last year
Hi5 has been establishing partnerships in this space, and last week Hi5 completed its transition by relaunching the site with a strong focus on games and virtual currency. Hi5 says both are now contributing greatly to their bottom line, and comScore is showing nearly 60% unique visitor growth from Sept'08-Sept'09. And with gaming advertisers have the opportunity to create more involved ad-experiences than run-of-network banners.
Both MySpace and Hi5 aren't in the clear yet, but by focusing on the strong-points and staying away from the numbers races they have a better chance at long term success.