Myspace Hosts New TV Series as it Attempts to Curb the Facebook Threat
Myspace Hosts New TV Series as it Attempts to Curb the Facebook Threat
September 14, 2007: To combat the exploding popularity of Facebook, Myspace has just announced it will exclusively distribute “Quarterlife” a new TV drama following the lives of a bunch of twenty-somethings on its MyspaceTV network.
Myspace has long been regarded the king of the social networking scene, particularly with its domination of the youth market. New entrant to the market, Facebook has exploded in growth with increasing popularity amongst working professionals as well as the youth market.
Whilst it still maintains a healthy lead in terms of web traffic and page impressions over the newcomer, Myspace is facing the very real possibility of being overtaken as Facebook’s growth continues its rapid rise. According to Web information company, ‘Alexa’reports, Myspace has remained steady in its sixth place in global internet traffic rankings. Facebook on the other hand has jumped seven places to move into tenth place overall and shows signs of continuing this growth.
Myspace hopes to curb the Facebook danger by treading into uncharted territory of its own. The release marks the first time a network-quality series will be produced directly for the Internet. Quarterlife is being made by the Emmy award winning team behind "My So-Called Life," "thirtysomething," "Legends of the Fall," and "Blood Diamond".
"When Emmy award-winning producers come to MySpaceTV -- you know this is reaching a whole new level," said Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace.
Facebook’s explosive growth saw 7,000 Australians join the network in just two days, the majority of this growth stems from its acceptance in the professional working world. Where Myspace has carried a stigma of immaturity and association with a teenage audience, Facebook has emerged as a more acceptable social networking medium in the workplace. Office conversation regarding to ‘facebooking’ someone instead of sending an email through the company network is quickly becoming the accepted practice for distribution of personal messages.
Analysis from Internet Filtering Company, Surf Patrol believes social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace can cause lost revenue, which is particularly dangerous considering the massive growth being seen. “Australians are joining the craze in record numbers. Australians rank 5th behind the US, Canada, UK and Norway, in terms of Facebook usage.” Says Dr. Richard Cullen, Chairman of Surf Patrol.
According to Cullen, if one employee is spending just one hour per day on Facebook, the company could lose around $6,200 per year, when multiplied across the 800,000 businesses in Australia this is a potential loss of $5 Billion per year.
The differences between the two social network giants is quite noticeable, where the majority of Myspace pages have masses of colour and audio-visual plugins, Facebook pages tend to be increasingly minimalist and more suited to a slightly older audience. Both networks have overlap between demographic sectors, and it isn’t uncommon for users to have sites on both Myspace and Facebook, though an eventual market dominator emerging seems a likely prospect.
Social networking has been rapidly taking off all over the globe, which is why the control of this market is so important to Myspace and Facebook, as word spreads and popularity kicks in the scene is only set to expand even more.