MySpace founders: ‘We have replaced MTV’
Cory Bergman January 19th, 2007
MySpace.com co-founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe had a couple interesting things to say in an interview with the German magazine Spiegel. “I think we have replaced MTV. MySpace is more convenient. You can search for things, while MTV is just delivering things to you,” said Anderson. “On MySpace you can pick your own channel and go where you want. That’s why TV viewership is dropping among the MySpace generation.” And what happens this coming October, when their contracts expire with News Corp. Will they leave? “As long as it’s still fun to be here we are going to continue our work. For me it feels like the opportunity has just begun, it’s definitely not ending,” Anderson said. And do they think they sold MySpace too early, given the mega-YouTube deal? “We try to look forward and not back,” DeWolfe said.
1 Comment Add your own
1. discreet_chaos | January 19th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
It’d be so easy to insert a snark about how the founders have such a hard time distinguishing between their single site and the internet as a whole. For example and from the single quote that was clipped for this post; “MySpace is more convenient. You can search for things, while MTV is just delivering things to you.” Well, the description is actually much broader, if you don’t limit yourself to just their site and open it up to the whole web.
Also and it may be because I don’t have a MySpace, but most of what I’ve seen are personal ads. That’s why I don’t have one, I’m sure my wife wouldn’t like it and I’m not in the market for an affair.
I have noticed that they have a blog feature, but I rarely see it used for anything of depth. I know from my own personal experience that though I’m now supplementing my main blog with a blogspot and I have plans to network-in a couple of other specialty blogs on other hosts, I still have everything point back toward my livejournal as my main workspace.
Now, I like certain aspects of livejournal and though my counter shows as much readership on a daily basis from outside livejournal as from within, but the guaranteed readership of an lj-friendslist and the ability to post certain things visible to only to vetted persons are two of the reasons that I’ve stuck with the host.
I also know that though I’ve had measurable success getting non-ljers to subscribe to my feeds and I regularly draw people from outside the domain to read my thoughts or post comments, I also occasionally encounter a prejudice against my blog because of its host and this prejudice has been voiced by people, both online and off. The same must be true with a MySpace-hosted blog because I know that I myself wouldn’t take such an url seriously, plus because I don’t have a myspace, there are limits on what the system will let me see and that can be frustrating to casual person on the street.
Which I guess brings me around to my point; MySpace is part of the internet and it’s a very popular channel among young people, but the NYTimes, Gawker and CNN are just as popular among people my age. It is not the internet as a whole, it is just one small part and I’m sorry, but for the life of me; I don’t see what attraction it could hold for anyone who’s happily married or in a commited relationship.
The fellows may think that MySpace has replaced MTV, but the web is what has affected the entire channel line-up.
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