Social Network Woes?
This past week
MySpace announced the purchase of Photobucket for $250 million in cash. Compared to News Corp's $580 million acquisition of MySpace, this looks relatively expensive. Further since
Photobucket users are primarily MySpace users, News Corp is paying a lot for an incremental amount of eyeballs. Why would News Corp do such a thing?
Well, in a case of the rich getting richer, MySpace is the primary destination for social networkers out there. Sure, there's
LinkedIn for business folk,
Friendster for early adopter social networkers,
Sneakerplay for sneaker lovers,
Facebook for college students and so on and so forth. However, nothing beats the shear strength of MySpace's reach and depth (176 million as of right now). MySpace helps to launch many items of interest
including a high proportion of Michael Eisner's Prom Queen episodes, various movies and television shows, and of course the original intent of MySpace: music and unsigned bands. MySpace video is second only to juggernaut
YouTube and the numbers for MySpace are staggering, with the social networking site consistently in the top 5 sites hit, searched for, and session time.
MySpace is protecting its territory and rightfully so. However, those of you who remember Friendster also remember how quickly that social network flickered out. With niche social networks coming out, MySpace wants to be the ONLY destination for social networkers. Two weeks ago, I was notified that my account on Nike's Runner's social network would no longer be supported. I suspect that as time goes on this will be a common scenario. However, the niche social networks do have targeting which many advertisers find valuable. The social network is stronger than ever however, we are slowly seeing segmentation.
I would compare this now to the age of network television versus cable. We have the big players, the MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, and Facebooks (akin to ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox) and then the niche players like SneakerPlay,
MuscleDog,
Barack Obama Supporters, etc which all serve a very important purpose. And if we take this a step further, I could definitely see MySpace purchasing other social networks (like StockPickr for example) similar to NBC and CNBC, simply to sell highly targeted niche advertising.
Labels: barack obama, eisner, facebook, myspace, news corp, nike, prom queen, sneakerplay, social network, stockpickr, trends, youtube
Eisner named Prom King
The results are in and Michael Eisner wins ... or does he? The anticipated results for the one month old
Prom Queen Internet serial are in from Eisner led
Vuguru. According to
Mediaweek, the 2 minute web episodic is averaging 200,000 views per day and an aggregate of 5.2 million views since its premiere on April 2nd. Now that's pretty impressive considering that some of the
weekly most viewed on
YouTube are 200,000 (in fact, at 200,000 it would have been 15th on YouTube's Weekly list). And for many of us, we can actually go back and watch these clips at our leisure and thus racking up more hits. Further, Prom Queen has garnered more than 18,000 friends on
MySpace where users are treated to a sneak peak of the show. Out of the show's 5 million views, MySpace accounts for nearly 4 million, followed by Eisner's other company,
Veoh, at about 1 million, YouTube at a quarter million and PromQueen.tv.
Given the long tail, that's a hit. Prom Queen is receiving on average 200,000 views. That's not taking into account any of the archived views or streamed mobile clips. That's an amazing number, especially one that can be sustained over (thus far, 40 episodes). I'm not going to comment about the content, although, I got into it for a while, but then my interest level dropped off (probably because I'm not a Prom Queen friend....yet). The production values are phenomenal and I almost wish there was more to watch at the end of my two minutes. Ok, so the content is great, production value is great, but the big question is this: Is it bringing any value to the sponsor, HairSpray the movie? I'm not sure, although it probably is bringing some general awareness to the movie from this tween demographic. The other question is this: Is this model easily replicated? The team that put together Prom Queen also put together a daily webisodic called
SamHas7Friends, which while good did not receive the same number of hits as Prom Queen. But again, that, I guess was an experiment (a very successful one) that landed them the gig with Eisner which didn't have the P&A (prints and advertising) that Prom Queen has (although Prom Queen has no P&A but in web speak, they have banner ads and big time press and a big time backer). So...what's the model here?
Does this have to be something daily? What frequency?
TheBurg.tv comes out monthly with their 15-20 minute episodes and I think they've done fairly well (
537,686 on Alexa vs
148,798 for Prom Queen). Is it the length of time? 2 minutes really does keep you on the edge of your seat... What genre works? My gut would say comedy or thriller but watch YouTube and you find all types of things. Well, I guess keep watching this space for more information as we continue to experiment in this new new world.
Labels: eisner, myspace, prom queen, the long tail, vuguru, youtube
Prom Queen
So
Prom Queen debuted on Monday. If you are not aware of it, it is Michael Eisner (ex-CEO of Disney) venture into the online world via
Vuguru his online production company. 90 second episodics professionally produced and sponsored through pre and post roll advertisements. Prom Queen is produced by the same team that put together
Sam Has 7 Friends, normally thought of as the harbinger of the online serial short, and the first series produced by Vuguru and hosted on
Veoh (Eisner is on their board).
Initially thoughts? Not bad. There's a pre-roll and a post-roll advertisement for Hairspray the movie. That's it. No visible product placements. No visible brands. Content wise? Not bad either. Feels Dan Brownish. Each episode ends on a cliff hanger of some sort that leaves you wanting more. The production quality also gives an eerie "Am I watching TV online?" feel to it that makes Internet time feel like TV time. (Meaning that on TV they can slowly creep into a room but online why don't they just have a jumpcut to the room?) Honestly the 90 seconds goes by pretty quickly and you almost wish that they didn't have this restriction (which is obviously what they want). Each of the characters have their own MySpace page and the forums (while not heavily travelled ... yet) could be an interesting point to determine plot points and other things that the producers could use ... or not use.
In my opinion I think the content executes well. I could see that the series could be highly addictive and like shows like Lost and 24 have fan sites arising and all types of chatter via the message boards and forums. The production quality is superior and rivals that of ABC.com. The one thing I'd like to see is better integration of product sponsors with the content. As we move toward a pay per action world, perhaps that's what we might see. But for a first pass, good job, Michael. We'll be waiting to see who kills the Prom Queen.
Labels: eisner, prom queen, vuguru, youtube
