You may or may not have heard about the results of some ethnographic research done by a Danah Boyd, a social scientist in the States, looking at the differences between MySpace and Facebook. If you haven’t, go ahead and read it over here. Very interesting stuff — in that it confirms what many intuitively understand about social networking sites in general.
Namely, that they are collections of individuls who are loosely defined by common interests, and therefore, they may have commonalities with respect to income, ethnicity, and, from a pragmatic point of view — purchasing power.
To sum it up?
Facebook – upper to middle class individuals who have gone, or who are going, to college. Myspace — freaks, goths, emo kids, and other individuals interested in the non-mainstream, often lower earning and non-white with the expectation of not going to college.
I’m going to leave aside for the moment any references in the actual work demonstrating that there is proof for her assertions, and assume that it confirms my own biases toward these social networking sites.
Partly because the author seems to have a body of work in the area — and partly because I’m sure it will come out in some form or another. And more importantly, when it does, reagrdless of how rigorous the study is, it will have an explosive effect in the news, given how prevalent both of these SNS are.
Which brings me to my real point.
Now, I’m not a VC and I don’t know exactly how companies are valued. But isn’t the biggest question “how is this data going to affect how both of these companies are valued?”
More specifically — given how Rupert Murdoch might be looking to offload MySpace to Yahoo (certainly, more than Facebook is going to be sold), *could* this report damn all attempts to sell MySpace … to *any* potential suitor?
Might Rupert Murdoch and Fox be looking at a kind of never-ending purgatory with their $500 million dollar buy?
Well, that’s not entirely fair — I’m sure they have their own means to monetize the site, but its probably far and away from the 25% of Yahoo! … because I can promise you now that the data is out — and more to the point, that the confirmation of the *perception* of MySpace is out — Yahoo! won’t touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Not because it doesn’t make financial sense, specifically. Maybe they have some grand plans to put *it* on “Yahoo rocket fuel” too (like Rivals) — maybe.
But the kind of reputation that Myspace now has — is that a fit for Yahoo? Is that a fit for *any* brand that has the reserves to cash out Rupert Murdoch?
Does Microsoft want to be associated with ” immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, and queer kids”?
How about Disney? Or Apple?
Any brands that do have a good fit (music companies, retail brands) — ones that might be edgier, that have an ‘alternative’ bent … do any of them have the reserves to purchase MySpace at a price that Rupert Murdoch is going to be happy with?
Of course not.
[Now, they might if they partner up with some VC cash, but that's an entirely different proposition].
Which leads me to the gut reaction that I had after I read this report: Rupert Murdoch, no matter where he is, is probably cursing Danah Boyd. Cursing her and that report for trumping his plans for world domination flipping MySpace. *OR* … merely telling everyone that which he already knew. Which might be a reason for trying to move MySpace in the first place.
