MySpace start Revealed (i)

Why study this case

In less than three years, MySpace became the top five web site in the United States. June 2006 Independent Visit Volume 48 million, Page view volume 27.4 billion. It may not be as profitable as Google, ebay or Yahoo, but it is likely to become the next Internet "platform". MySpace, which transcends earlier friendster into social networking, makes MySpace a good material for case studies.

I did the following interviews: Several people who had a close relationship with the company in the early days of MySpace, although they had little contact with MySpace. The people involved in social networking include the product managers of rival companies and MySpace service providers, among others. I am an observer of the Board of Directors at MySpace as a competitor (board observer).

The key to Success

Give users more freedom to design their MySpace homepage, so that users can express themselves and communicate with friends

The success of MySpace has many factors. But if I had to choose one, it would be this one. The early success of MySpace began with the user base of teenage children. The kids use MySpace to share photos, communicate, and make their own best personal homepage. Allowing indie bands to lead users to discover music is a good feature, but it does not constitute MySpace's main traffic. In addition, many users do use MySpace to find objects, but this kind of activity mainly occurs in 21-26-year-old users, and this is not MySpace's main user base.

The importance of sharing photos cannot be overemphasized. The popularity of digital cameras and mobile phone photography is a driving force for many social networking developments, not just MySpace. MySpace allows its users to use Third-party services such as Photobucket and imageshack to add more photos to their personal homepage. I think this is an important reason for MySpace to go beyond Friendster.

Shorten the development cycle, so that the product quickly adapt to user requirements

What exactly did MySpace do to achieve this highly expressive environment? It takes a basic strategy: don't anticipate how users will want to interact with the site. When the user spontaneously produced the homepage of the same interest user group, MySpace accepted the user behavior, and Friendster did not. MySpace listens to user feedback, develops quickly, and launches new products quickly. MySpace added blogs, message boards, discussion areas, instant messaging and other functions far earlier than Friendster. Part of the reason is that Friendster is plagued by system expansion issues. MySpace did not intervene when users used technical means to change MySpace's personal homepage feature, adding more photobucket photos to their homepage. With this change, users can add photos and pictures to their friends ' message board. This feature has become one of the main reasons for users to spend more time in MySpace.

Initial user accumulation relies on three means of combination: viral growth, non-network advertising, network communications partners

It is widely believed that MySpace immediately after the online transmission of word of mouth viral spread rapid growth of the user base. This is not the case. MySpace has used a combination of tactics, including the successful use of traditional promotional tools, the use of existing network brands to spend money to collect users (costs per acquisition, CPA). MySpace is the work of the Responsebase team in Intermix, a team that has a strong background in email marketing and CPA. When MySpace's users reached millions of, they began to rely on the virus to spread. In the "Start Strategy" section I will delve into this.

Decisions about product and research policies should take into account the load capacity of the site

An important turning point in the Friendster and MySpace competition is that Friendster users give up the use of Friendster because of the load capacity of the site. Although this is due to Friendster's own problems, they have taken this into account in the early design stages of MySpace. First, MySpace decided not to show the "friend Chain". "Friend Chain" This display friend connection function, in the Web site at any time will greatly increase the operation of the system. To ensure the load capacity of the site, MySpace decided not to provide the core functionality of the Friendster. Second, in early development, MySpace allowed only American users to register. Friendster has been quite successful in the Philippines (still in). But unfortunately, before the online brand advertising market matures in Asia, these flows from the Philippines are more about spending than revenue. For American users who can produce advertising value, this has a negative impact on the Web site's access speed and other load indicators. It was the right decision for MySpace to open up other countries ' registrations until the US users broke through the tipping point.

Start strategy


MySpace's idea was originally from Chris DeWolfe of Intermix and Tom Anderson. They are joining intermix through Intermix acquisition of Responsebase. Many of the responsebase members come from x-drive, so they have strong experience in the development and promotion of personal network users. Seeing Friendster's initial successes and realizing that they have the resources they have in responsebase/intermix, they think they can be competitive in this field. Responsebase has a database that includes 100 million e-mails; Intermix has several sites, many of whom are in the age group of MySpace users.

MySpace spent three months developing a Web site similar to the Friendster feature, which was launched at the end of 2003. The original strategy of MySpace was not aimed at independent production of bands and social networks around music. The theme of music is the development of the user-centric Web site in the process of natural development. Interestingly, user growth was unsuccessful in the first 6-9 months after the initial launch and the launch. MySpace's initial promotion was a prize-winning contest for Intermix employees (about 250 people) to invite their friends to register. This has a certain effect, but the number of users is very limited. Next, they use the Responsebase email list for e-mail promotion. This has some impact, but it's basically a failure. This is because e-mail promotion does not attract users who can generate loyalty to the site as already existing groups or organizations. So MySpace started offline, sponsoring the club, bands, and various parties in the Los Angeles area. These efforts are increasingly affecting MySpace. More importantly, it attracts a lot of small offline communities (i.e. groups) to use MySpace. Small communities between 100 and 1000 people are beginning to produce snowball-type viral growth and attract more individual users to join.


After the initial user was established, MySpace began to make further use of intermax channels and media relations to fan the wind for combustion. Partners to promote the combination of the existing strong user base, so that MySpace from the initial success to Take-off. Without the use of traditional means of promotion, MySpace may not have the high growth we see today. (Source: Thunder Rain Big)