Mike Jones, CEO, MySpace
Q&A with Robert Scoble, American Blogger, Tech Evangelist & Author
WARNING – liveblogged, some paraphrasing, some things may be missing
Photo from Adam Tinworth
RS: so what is it like trying to save this company?
MJ: big changes. Launched new product about 15 days ago…
RS: only 1-2% of this audience has been there
MJ: we are focused on sub35 year old…the new product is about entertainment. we want to be the best in the social entertainment experience. So far, it has been very positive.
RS: reading the press, keep reading Murdoch wants to sell. Is he going to give you anough time?
MJ: Newscorp are entrepreneural. They knew they needed to make a big change and believe they will give us the time
RS: the FB integration? so how was that, you were in a battle, you lost that and now making deals with them
MJ: we had to realise we would not win in SNS. but the web is social. the audience is connecting to bands, so we wanted to be the best platform for connecting with entertainment. So we did deal so FB users can bring their likes etc. We had to change our philosophy and we think its the right thing
RS: so what’s the next 3 months.?
MJ: we have been tentative on how we roll these out? you’ll see more changes, working with other platforms…we want to be the best platform for social entertainment
RS: new devices change how we consume entertainment?
MJ: i get focused on mobile tech, and impact business, a third of audience of MySpace is via mobile. we are creating a mobile app network. 4-5 on iphone, with ipad, with google tv, they are all about entertainment..about focusing on being best in that category. We build more and more apps…a big part of the buisness.
RS: what is the new app we get next week?
MJ: today, you can interact with content whether you log in or not…the new mobile app will allow you to connect without login in. We can create more based on your itunes on your phone,,,to create relevance.
RS: what are you doing with tweets on MSpace?
MJ: we have topic pages…will aggregate content…we need to know what people are talking about and how to inject ourselves..we spend a lot of time listening
RS: but YT is one place for consuming video?
MJ: we want to put your entainment through a social lens, so if it’s hosted on YT or Hulu etc..so YT becomes a hosting partner.
RS: a tweet comment about horrible compression…
MJ: in some places we optimise for listening and others for discovery…but often people buy and take it with them..we are looking at this but not looking to replace itunes, but be a discovery place.
RS: what else is happening? Layoffs? New team?
MJ: my belief is we need to take an entreprenerial approach….its different…(can’t say)
RS: what are you learning on new platform?
MJ: the lapsers are becoming more steady state; for the new things like topic pages, we get more engagement. we are noticing more curators…we can connect you to curators…you then come back. If you were using MyS for social networking, that audience will be going away, this segment will decrease…we are looking at the ones we can grow, bring back and which we can let go
RS: this audience (at LeWeb)have not seen it
MJ: go and search for a movie or a show, you will see all the content about the show. you can follow these pages,. a rich content source…will become part of your daily routine…we will release new features each month etc, a new iphone app next week, more things every week. We are running as a start up.
