Don't Do That
I am catching up on my reading after a wonderful day off to celebrate 20 years of marriage and reading that Yahoo! is talking to News Corp about a business combination of MySpace and Yahoo! that would result in News Corp owning 25% of the merged entity.
And I've got The Rollings Stones greatest live record, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!, on the turntable and Mick is shouting:
Oh dont do that, oh dont do that, oh dont do that
And that's what I want to tell Jerry Yang and the Yahoo! board. Don't do that!
MySpace is a tired social network that may have a ton of traffic but it has peaked. It doesn't have mojo anymore.
Like AOL in 1999, it will take years before people realize it.
MySpace isn't worth 25% of the combined company.
Facebook, yes, MySpace no.
[i am not saying Facebook is worth $12bn, just that a business combo with Facebook would be great for Yahoo!]
Agreed. The MySpace flight has begun.
Posted by: rick | June 21, 2007 at 12:49 PM
While I agree that Myspace has lost it's mojo, and that Facebook offers much more interesting opportunities. Myspace has a real opportunity to evolve (devolve?)into a community that is based around music and film. Facebook doesn't have anywhere near the promotional capabilities for bands and filmmakers. Given the rise of independent production, this is a real opportunity.
If this direction is exploited properly, Yahoo would have much to gain as it's been trying to break into the offering of media in it's seperate silos for a long time but has been lackluster in achieving results versus specialized sites like youtube or the numerous band sites.
Pairing the information/media access and traffic of Yahoo with a really viable distribution and promotion vehicle like Myspace could be interesting.
Posted by: Tyler Willis | June 21, 2007 at 01:27 PM
I couldn't agree more. Any MySpace deal would be strictly rear view mirror. Yahoo blew the social network thing first-time round. Accept it and move on to Facebook or the next new thing. A MySpace deal would be a weak effort to atone for past sins.
Posted by: Greg | June 21, 2007 at 01:52 PM
The hard part about bringing in facebook and Y! together would be the integration. I fear that the startup mojo that is facebook would be ground to a pulp.
It's one thing to bring in a little company and essentially leave them alone to do what they've been doing (ala flickr). But FB would be just too high profile. Too many people would want to leave their mark. I suspect that Y! couldn't help itself but try to "improve" the process within FB.
You'd also have the tremendous management problem of many, many, Y!'s being underwater in their options and bringing in a new team of freshly minted millionaires.
Posted by: Erik Schwartz | June 21, 2007 at 02:12 PM
I think MySpace is more tired than AOL was in 1999, or this would be a deal where Murdoch was acquiring Yahoo with MySpace $s. Myspace is way, way too tired for that, but give or take a year I do think your AOL analogy is very valid.
I believe google will kill them all with data driven social networking that forms communites of people on the fly based on search data. Yahoo could do this too, but with less success since google has ~2/3rds of the search world and Yahoo only has 1/3rd. I still think Yahoo creating a version of what I'm talking about would be smarter than buying myspace.
I hope Yahoo isn't too worried about adding "eyeballs" for the sake of perceived performance. I worry that it is though.
Congrats on 20 years!
Posted by: Robert Seidman | June 21, 2007 at 05:04 PM
Facebook is hot, but too hot.
A deal now with anyone one is not going to happen with all the HS and college aged developers clammoring to build apps for it.
And myspace is so not tired. How do you listen to most new bands these days, their lable hosted sites? Nope. Myspace has yet to be fully tapped by second stagers in web world. Sure kids are all over it but when moms get it and get more pages is when the model can translate into better rev stream.
Myspace + yahoo widgets +flickr + yahoo maps + Yahoo music tied into Myspace based music app will be awesome. This has been long in the works.
Posted by: kip | June 21, 2007 at 08:35 PM
It's like tying yourself to an anchor to try to keep afloat. I don't get it.
Posted by: Douglas Karr | June 21, 2007 at 11:16 PM
My 2 cents.........If the internet was invented in the 1830's, then the Farabuttos would have been PHP programmers, not tailors. As such, they would be peddling beautiful social networks with the "wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid."
Go ahead Jerry, I dare you.
Posted by: whooknew | June 22, 2007 at 08:10 AM
Yahoo and MySpace: a deal with the Devil.
Posted by: Mike Abundo | June 23, 2007 at 05:50 AM