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MySpace’s nonexistence greatly exaggerated

January 23, 2015 By Admin Leave a Comment

MySpace is alive and well and apparently never lost its core group of users, music fans. More than 50 million people visited what many people think of as the original social network service this past November (the latest monthly figure available), a 575% increase, the Wall Street Journal reports. And they viewed more than 300 million videos in the month of November (the latest monthly figure available). The Journal cites the CEO of Viant, parent of the company behind MySpace, as saying the service “has managed to attract a vibrant audience of 17-to-25-year-olds” and “still has access to over a billion registered users globally, particularly music and entertainment fans” – and people who never deleted their accounts and still have a lot of photos storied in them.

What all that adds up to is marketing revenue that could compete with Facebook’s in size and innovation, with a fraction of its day-to-day user base. Viant is putting its own registration data with those of other media companies (other than Facebook, Google or Amazon), anonymizing it, and “connecting it with advertisers’ own in-store shopping data. “That combination, which [Viant] claims few companies outside of perhaps Facebook are capable of, will provide advertisers with a true read on how their online advertising impacts real world sales.” Just one sign that special promotion offers and other ads highly tailored to us in real time, as we simultaneously check our social media apps and shop (in stores), will be more and more embedded in the minutiae of our and our kids’ everyday lives with no firewall between online and offline. Which is why media literacy is more important than it ever has been (see my post earlier this week about the role of literacy in privacy protection).

Related links

  • More about MySpace’s roots in the music scene in my 2009 post “MySpace’s PR problem”
  • And a little more history: a post in 2008 marking the approximate point when Facebook started passing up MySpace; and Amazon is still selling Larry Magid’s and my 2006 book on MySpace, which – like any book about a specific social media service – was/is a history book within months of its pub date!
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Filed Under: music, Social Media, social networking Tagged With: advertising, media literacy, MySpace, social media marketing, Viant

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2016 TEDx Talk on
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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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