New Media: Another Bubble Waiting to Burst?
While catching up on marketing and new media news this morning, I ran across another mention of the forthcoming Myspace News… a service planned to compete with Digg’s news aggregator. It got me thinking… with all of these new media companies trying to dip their toe into a little bit of everything at once, who are the real leaders in the new media wave, and when will this new media overload finally just burst?
Let’s tackle this Myspace vs. Digg thing for a moment….
Myspace is undoubtedly the most popular social networking site on the Web. Digg is probably the most popular news aggregator on the Web. Do they really need to directly compete? I say “no.”
My thoughts on the new media do-everything mentality:
Give it a rest already. New media is hot, sure. It’s full of plenty of fab finds, but it’s also full of fads that don’t have what it takes to survive in the long haul. But like in any business, you need to know your market and fill a need. Doing something just because someone else thought of it first, and your ego can’t handle it, isn’t a good reason to make a business or marketing move.
I have to wonder in this particular case (among others) whether or not News Corp. execs have ever heard the phrase “you can’t be everything to everyone.” Sure, you can try. But you’ll expend resources in an unproductive way, and end up slacking on your flagship product or service, alienating members of your target market in the process.
In this case, while Myspace may be popular, it’s far from “loved” by a good chunk of the member base. There are constant technical issues (from servers going down more often than is acceptable for any business, to individual features crashing and profiles unable to be accessed), not to mention the growing Myspace spam problems. Yet Myspace keeps on trying to expand into new markets, and now new tools. So my advice to News Corp. (not that they’d care): get your social network operating smoothly as a social networking site before adding more to an overloaded system and team! For the things Myspace has done well (like working with bands and their Myspace video feature), they’ve flopped at plenty as well (like the regurgitated jobs they’re now pushing to their uber-sucky classifieds system that couldn’t hold a candle to CraigsList). Let’s fix this “old house” before building another addition.
The Bigger Picture
That doesn’t just go for News Corp., but for all of these companies who can’t find their identity in this new media circus. Generally, when you launch a business, you should have some basic business sense (like um, I don’t know… how about knowing your market and actually giving something they want and need, rather than just trying to play “catch up” with everyone else?). Has the Web really changed this? I sure hope not, because I’d hate to see the new media industry fall flat on it’s baby face just because these companies are trying to run when they’re still learning how to crawl.
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