An article on the BBC telling how due to traffic statistics, Myspace lost 10 million users between January and Feburary this year. I’m taking these stats with a pinch of salt, but they are still staggering; Myspace has 63 millions users, down from 110 million in February last year.
Murchdochs Newscorp bought Myspace for £330 million back in 2005 in a bid to get themselves a foothold on the growing net marketplace. At the time Myspace was visually quite a mess, but was the biggest go-to site for every teenager in the West and they had control of it.
Facebook emerged and put real pressure on Newscorps big venture. They decided to change stratergy from a pure social network to an ‘entertainment destination’ – focusing on music; providing a platform for artsits and people to listen and engage with them. After all focusing on music sets it apart from Facebook and Myspace had help launch the careers of many music stars, such as Arctic Monkeys, Kate Nash and Lily Allen.
This brings me to question Murdoch’s stance with the paywall – requiring users to pay a subscription to view the content of news articles.
It is a bold move without a doubt and has had many questioning it. Google have made it easier for paywalls with Google OnePass facilitating the payment for content. Murdoch is an effective businessman in the traditional world, but will his paywall venture pay off? Maybe with some help from Google. Content being hidden behind paywalls could mean a reduction in quality content to general non-fee paying users across the net, possibly presenting opportunity for smaller news outlets to flourish. Will this venture go the way of Myspace? This author believes there is a place for the paywall model but as with everything -it will come down the execution.