The Early Reviews of MySpace News Are In, And They Ain’t So Scorching
It’s fascinating in many ways that the world’s most popular social networking site just rolled out a social news (community votes for stories, and the most popular bubble up to the top or front page for maximum exposure) platform, which would presumably compete with the likes of Digg, Netscape, and Reddit. (Check out the new MySpace News here.)
The early reviews are… not so scorching, however.
Mashable ain’t beating ’round no bushes: “MySpace News… Kinda Sucks.” There’s constructive criticism to back up this assessment, including the new site’s lack of integration with the rest of MySpace. One would think that leveraging the power of millions of registered users and their profiles would be a no brainer. Other not so good things: lack of comments, search, and widgets, and an early surplus of spam. Pete Cashmore ends by saying, “So far, MySpace has failed to push that huge audience to its own services (think: MySpace IM, MySpace Video, fact that photo hosting is mainly done by Photobucket etc).”
Meanwhile, Wired’s Compiler says that “MySpace News Should Be Benched.” The main indictment here is that a mix of weak stories (”Donkey Testifies in Dallas Noise Complaint Trial”) is paired with very low vote totals making the front page. In the biz we call this the “ghost town effect.” People like to hang out on sites where there’s lots of action going on, and lots of other people.
(That’s why bloggers love comments! Hint, hint… 
And Josh Lowensohn of Webware states that MySpace News is “Far From A Digg Killer.” Josh seems to sum up the consensus of many in stating that, “In other words, almost all the features that make Digg worth coming back to are missing from MySpace News.”
On the plus side, Bloggers Blog likes MySpace News “because of its heavy focus on blogs for news.”
I’ll repeat my argument that I began laying out yesterday: instead of going after the news market, why doesn’t MySpace News base its submit-and-vote system on MySpace content itself? MySpace is a massive online ecosphere, what with millions of profiles, many thousands of bands, umpteen photos and videos and even blog entries uploaded every day, etc.
MySpace is MySpace because it’s a bastion of self-marketing and networking. If you tied a social news engine directly into this core competency, I believe there would be a much greater chance for success than what this current diluted version of Digg or Netscape appears to be.
In other words, every time a MySpace user uploads a video there should be a question that asks, “Submit to MySpace News?” And right there you’re creating tremendous interest in fueling the ever thirsty social news engine and at the same time compelling people to submit their self-promotional wares and check out what other people are doing.
This makes all kinds of sense to me, and I’m surprised that I haven’t seen anyone else mention it yet.
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April 20th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
[…] Another good idea comes from Eric Berlin over at Online Media Cultist - why not have users rate each other’s MySpace pages? […]
April 20th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Yeah, I think that’s a pretty good idea. MySpacers are fairly self-obsessed, as you say, and such a system is either got to be focused on them, or celebrity culture (photos of celebrities, celeb blogs etc). Plugging in a Digg clone isn’t going to work.
April 20th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
[…] The Online Media Cultist features a good review of the blogosphere reaction to MySpace News. To quote: The early reviews […]
April 20th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
[…] is a missed opportunity, while The Last Podcast says it is just plain bad. Eric Berlin says MySpace missed the boat and should be focusing on getting user-generated content from its […]
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:24 am
[…] Online Media Cultist: The Early Reviews of MySpace News Are In, And They Ain’t So Scorching Reviewers of MySpace’s new news service are so far underwhelmed. (tags: myspace myspacenews) […]
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:11 am
Thanks for all of the link love, Jason, Last Podcast, Mathew, and Martin!
Pete - I continue to be surprised at what a terrible product launch this is turning out to be. I checked out MySpace News today and saw that all front page stories were in the 2-3 vote range. As a MySpace branded site, with one zillion potential users to leverage, it’s incredible that the site is in major ghost town territory.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:33 am
[…] The Early Reviews of MySpace News Are In, And They Ain’t So Scorching […]
April 28th, 2007 at 6:42 am
myspace is full of spam and corporate greed.
“no, Candy… I don’t want to be your freind.”
myspace news is a prime example of money buying power without creativity to back it’s development.
noah from www.therevolutiondirectory.com
April 29th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Noah, that opinion is certainly not uncommon. Therefore I feel that while MySpace is looking for ways to make more money, they absolutely need to innovate in order to maintain its lead in the social networking space.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:39 pm
I am personally having fun with myspace..I find it very interesting…
I post reviews on my website when I find amusing myspace pages…It never ends the stuff u find on myspace to write about..
Sometimes we write about a celebrity myspace page…
or add some videos..or pictures u can use on myspace..
To me…Myspace never is dull
My Wild Crazy Space Reviews
http://www.mywildcrazyspace.com
June 3rd, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Donna, glad you’re having fun with MySpace. If I had to guess, I’d say that you’re not using MySpace News though, which is what this conversation is about. Cheers ~ EB
June 5th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Oh News…
I have to get my reading glasses checked…
Sorry
Donna
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