One of the reasons that Owen Van Natta, the recently appointed Chief Executive of the Social Networking Site ‘MySpace’ accepted the position is because he will be able to make substantial changes to the site but why would he want to do that?
Well mainly because MySpace, even though it is the number 2 Social Networking site in the world, has not shown any real growth in recent months, currently sitting with around 130 million users and is now lagging quite far behind its rival and number 1 Social Networking site ‘Facebook’ who have 70 million more.
This is despite the fact that MySpace offers its users more scope and individualism when it comes to creating and designing their pages so that isn’t the problem.
“When I look at MySpace there’s just so much opportunity to build,” Van Natta said at The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference. “I took the job because there’s a lot more that can be done around innovation.”
Van Natta, former Facebook executive, hasn’t revealed any secrets about what it is that he intends to do with MySpace to make it more appealing to new users but no doubt he has an idea or two up his sleeve.
“I’m a big believer in personalization,” he said. “Our job is to make MySpace really, really great for everybody, and that means that the experience has to be different for everybody.”
Social Networking is growing in popularity all the time with sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter all facing the same challenge. Just how do you generate revenue from these popular multi-user sites?
At the moment, California based MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, takes in a chunk of cash from a $900 million deal with Google Inc that was signed in 2007 and which expires next August so will there be a new deal?
At the All Things Digital conference earlier this week, executives from News Corp and MySpace said they were working with Google to try and make the existing deal better for both sides.
Jonathan Miller, who recently took on the job of Chief Digital Officer of News Corp, said that a new agreement with Google could involve other News Corp Websites.
“When it comes time to negotiate, one of the things that can be helpful is looking at it from the overall News Corp perspective,” News Corp Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller said.
It will be interesting to see what transpires over the coming months so watch this space.
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