Is MySpace Ready to Make a Comeback? Should CRM Professionals Care?

MySpace, which effectively defined social media in the middle of the last decade, is now barely a blip on the radar of most social CRM professionals.

True, it still does millions of hits, with its monthly traffic falling into the web’s top 100 on most charts. It still has an extensive user base and leads list, and it still brings unique features and elements to the table.

But if its recent sale to Specific Media for about $35 million, which is about 6% of what prior owner News Corp. paid for the site, says anything, it says, quite resoundingly, that MySpace is no longer "hot."

Specific Media is committed to changing that reality. Having recently touted A-lister Justin Timberlake’s involvement as its creative director, the "new" MySpace, almost excessively, wants to re-establish an image of relevance.

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In doing so, MySpace is willing to acknowledge Facebook’s victory in the broad social networking space and instead focus on the one thing it feels it always did best—music.

Newly-appointed SVP of global marketing Al Dejewski confirms that MySpace will rebrand itself as a music portal over the next year, hoping to attract vast involvement from celebrities and consumer goods sponsors to raise awareness of the new image.

"This young adult male needs to be put on a diet, we need to get it on P90X, clean its system and get back to its foundation. And we've found that foundation is music," Dejewski tells AdAge, viewing MySpace as a young adult male whose vision became convoluted over time. "No other music destination online today can claim the breadth of partnership we have with the four major music labels in addition to the tens of millions of independent artists and the libraries of their songs."

MySpace’s tools for recording artists have long been touted as a selling point for the network, but as the network lost its way in the world of social media, so too did the value of those tools. After all, no matter how music-friendly the network is in comparison to Facebook, if artists, producers and labels cannot cleanly attract their target audience, success is going to be difficult to attain.

By rebranding as a music network, however, MySpace would theoretically correct that problem and create a more desirable link between artist and listener. Users would presumably be there to access profiles, updates and media from musicians—not to flirt their way into dates with strangers.

While the preponderance of iPods, iPads and iPhones has enabled iTunes to effectively "own" the online music market, other networks have made their presence felt.

Vevo, a joint-venture between several key music labels that partners with Google’s YouTube, has generated traffic and revenue by commercializing the online distribution of music videos. Streaming service Spotify, meanwhile, commercializes the offering of recordings from major label and independent artists. That network found success in Europe and recently expanded to the United States.

Currently sporting a design format similar to that of Yahoo Music, MySpace’s rebranding will ultimately put it in competition with iTunes, Vevo and Spotify, the AdAge feature confirms.

Having entered the game at a relatively-low price point, Specific Media does not need MySpace to garner a Facebook-level valuation to be successful, and it clearly has no real intention of even trying to rekindle the competition with the Zuckerberg network. If successful at leveraging its music assets to corner a solid portion of the online media market, MySpace could indeed deliver a very positive ROI.

But in potentially rebounding as a relevant Internet media company, MySpace could be slamming the final door shut on its value as a CRM tool and thus eliminating relevance to most customer management professionals.

Certainly, a renewed commitment to music will provide immense marketing ammunition for media companies, and the fact that it will target partnerships with brands in the "automotive, packaged-goods and quick-service restaurant" suggests it will have a compelling value proposition about the worth of its audience.

Social CRM, however, requires more than a technically-large network that is theoretically "social." It requires one’s life—his daily happenings, opinions, interactions and advocacy—to be the focal point of the network, to be the star of the show.

Networks like Facebook and Twitter promote the sharing of details about oneself are perfect for targeting and actually mobilizing customers. Networks built instead around audiences’ interest in specific products, however, provide their truest value to those who actually offer those sorts of products.

A music artist will potentially see the marketing advantages the revamped MySpace has over Facebook, but is a home security or appliance company going to feel the same way?

And given the sheer reach of networks like Facebook—it is not even a certainty that media entities will see the CRM opportunities of a music-focused MySpace as superior to those offered by Facebook.

After all, it’s not like the majority of artists ditched their Facebook and Twitter accounts for Apple’s Ping.

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