New MySpace Slogan: Discover and Be Discovered

Posted by Pinky on Feb 21, 2010 in Blog | 2 comments

MySpace once famously used the slogan, “A Place For Friends.”  In fact, if you Google the term, you’ll see it pop up as the very first result. Sometime in the last few months however, that tagline mysteriously disappeared from the official logo, replaced by nothing at all.

On Thursday, the company had an all-hands-on-deck meeting, including all 600 employees at the official headquarters in Santa Monica, CA and via webcast for the satellite offices, to announce a new slogan, and more importantly, new purpose of the once mighty social network: “Discover and Be Discovered.” How quaint.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, “MySpace Tom” has left the building.  And with his departure went not only the vision of the company to be the place where friends connected, but the very soul of the company itself.  It’s as literal a surrender to facebook as a press conference admitting as much would have been.  But “Discover and Be Discovered?”  Is that all they’ve got?

I have been teaching Belmont University students how to establish and exploit a presence on MySpace since the Fall of 2008 and I still believe it serves an important roll.  But anyone who expects MySpace to be the anything other than a search engine-friendly set of tools for musicians is kidding themselves.  It’s the equivalent of someone using Blogger.com or TypePad to host a blog expecting millions of readers because of the platform they use.  I wish!

MySpace used to be a place of social discovery because of the very fact that it WAS a place for friends.  GET IT!?!  Your friends tell you what they’re into and you do the same.  That was a powerful position to be in because every website in the world is a place for content.  For discovery.  To be discovered.  If you own the social context however, you own the entire universe.  And guess who owns that now?

facebook.

I suppose there is only so much that MySpace can do at this point, now that they’ve squandered the very essence of their service.  News Corps. made an immediate profit after buying the company, thanks to a quick deal with Google for the advertising rights.  facebook won the war however, by staying focused on communication as the primary value to their members.  There is no question that they too are a place to discover and be discovered.  As is YouTube, Digg.com, Del.icio.us., Mixx.com, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Aol for that matter.

Ah, Aol.  Another company that once owned the universe and gave it away in exchange for content.  What’s that they say about history repeating itself?  Oh yea… that it does.

So MySpace is just another place to find stuff.  Another video sharing site. Another music jukebox service.  Another place to post your tour dates.  And any musician, comedian or independent video producer would be wise to make use of those free utilities.  Heck, I won’t even go so far as to say that MySpace won’t survive with that model.  But it’s a little bit like seeing your son or daughter coast through school, receive full scholarships to the Ivy League university of their choice and instead decide to manage a sandwich shop for the rest of their lives because it’s a way to pay the rent.  Squandered potential is a form of failure, and for a site that has done as much good for the entertainment community as it once did, it’s just a shame, simple as that.

So enjoy discovering… or whatever.  Right after you check your Aol inbox for tips about the Atkins diet.  Or just stick to facebook, where you can discover amazing things from all over the place, all of the time, and others can already discover you.

Related Posts: MySpace Music Shutting Down, Goodbye Tom. We Hardly Knew Ye.