This post was originally published on MarketingSherpa’s Blog
Editor’s Note: One of the prizes of winning the MarketingSherpa Reader’s Choice Awards is the chance for a guest post here on the MarketingSherpa blog. Today’s post is by Cheryl Burgess of the Blue Focus Marketing blog, chosen as best social media marketing blog … by you.
With the recent announcement of the “new” MySpace—and with Justin Timberlake providing the public face of the redesign—the question on everyone’s minds is: Will it work? Can a social media platform that had been all but left for dead really resurrect its brand? Much has changed since the site’s heyday around 2006-2007, and many obituaries have been written for the flagging social media platform since the advent of cooler, more versatile and user-friendly platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
Other more specialized social media platforms have also been introduced into the mix such as Twitter, Pinterest and Foursquare, each offering users a deliberately limited—but engaging—social experience. Quite simply, there will be a lot more competition for MySpace this next time around, including the thriving platforms responsible for “poaching” the platform’s original users in the first place.
Why did MySpace fail the first time?
According to Mark Goulston in his Fast Company article “ Why Did MySpace Fail?” MySpace may have been the first kid of the playground, so to speak, but it lacked the vision necessary to foster sustained success. “What Apple and Facebook know and more specifically their founders/CEOs Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have in common is aspirational clarity,” Goulston says. “They appear to be able to see … into the future of what their market will not just want, but go ga-ga over and then they deliver it.”
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Great post Cheryl. You definitely got my brain going on the ever changing social platforms.
Hi Lucy,
Thanks so much!
Cheryl