The HeavyChef Project

I’m still battling to see how MySpace can be profitable for small businesses (unless of course you just want to drive traffic from yet another link to your website like this). Aubrey, in our studio, reckons that there are networking groups that refer business to each other, a kind of online Business Networking International (BNI) or other business get-togethers. They then only allow select people who pass the grade into their closed circles. Funny that, since the whole point of MySpace.com is to be ‘the world’s biggest social networking group’. It’s starting to sound like the closed cliques that were formed at high school.

Anyway, it’s easy to see how bigger companies are starting to MySpace.com as a way to make themselves profitable. Parent group News Corp, who bought MySpace last year for around $450m, is now utilising the considerable numbers within MySpace communities to generate word-of-mouth buzz about their releases.

Take News Corp.-owned 20th Century Fox’s latest movie release ‘Borat‘ for example - it is being shown on MySpace before anywhere else. Anyone who has ever seen ‘Borat’ before knows that mainstream advertising will never quite cut it for this way-out highly controversial comedic icon. The character was created by Sacha Baron Cohen, more famous as his alter-ego Ali G. Borat has raised eyebrows before for his highly antoagonistic anti-semitic rantings (Cohen is Jewish), dipped with a heavy helping of irony. Fox has set a Nov. 3 U.S. release date for the film.

- Fred

Aubrey in our SA studio believes that the only way to get loads of friends on MySpace is to put naked pictures of yourself. I said that nobody would ever want to see either me or Mike wthout clothes. Ever.

Anyway, this has brought up the question: How can MySpace be useful for anything other than dating or socialising? Is there a way to bring business into this?

Considering that we’ve already established that relationships are critical to business success, there will be a big irony if the biggest relationship portal in the world (well over 100m people) has no benefit to a business.

There is an interesting (yet heavy reading) blog called ‘Start Up Review‘ which does something similar to the Heavy Chef blog in that it looks at new technology and researches it*.

‘Start-up Review’ does not, however, get its hands dirty like Mike and I, but it has posted a pretty comprehensive article on MySpace - if you’re feeling brave, go make yourself a cup of coffee and click here.

PS: One snippet in this article really stands out for me:

If the two largest Web 2.0 successes
(based on number of registered users) are Skype and MySpace, I think it
is interesting to note that each benefited from having a major
distribution partnership during launch.

…once again, showing that even
with these high-tootin’, high-falutin’ tech companies, relationships
are absolutely key. Advertising, so tempting to companies with big start-up capital, is secondary. This seems obvious,
right? Spare a thought for the famous fashion start-up Boo.com which burnt over
$120m in 6 months, mostly on advertising, and then closed up shop.

*Thanks to Andrew for this link.

I came across an interesting article yesterday that talked about the economics of social networking highlighting MySpace as a prime example.

As a web company that works with mainly small businesses a website can be an important investment and in the main must return some form of profitability. Its therefore really important that we try and grasp the dynamics of how a new generation is interacting on the web. I believe the future of online business will be less about searching for a product and buying it, but more about a decision made due to a network of interaction with other users. Heck, its happening already!

Personally, I love systems and the feeling it brings of control, Yes I am a control freak. But the unfortunate truth is, as someone working in the web industry, promoting particular ways of marketing I have to be more open to an organic approach. I see it a bit like being a Jedi in Star Wars. There is this universal energy, "The Force", that you need to tune in to. It’s not about trying to manipulate it but about understanding it and working with.

Anyway, before I get to deep into the ways of the force, check out this article:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/6/kurtzman1.asp

- Mike

I’ve just set up my account and maybe its me, but I found it a nightmare to get started and know how to change my details. Fred set his up pretty quickly so it must be me!

I eventually sussed it and got a friend immediately. 1 friend in 10 seconds, in the space of 4 weeks that would mean zillions, this should be easy. Only then to discover that "Tom" is actually the MySpace guy that welcomes you when you join. Back to zero.

Anyway, back to business. After playing for an hour, it actually got quite addictive and I’m starting to see some potential opportunities. It allows you to profile people like no other. So the opportunity could exist to seek out easily and befriend the type of person that fits your ideal customer profile. You can learn from them and find out exactly the things that make your customer tick. What they care about and how you can help. Anyway, thats just my initial thoughts for the day.

By the way, come check out my profile at: www.myspace.com/perky75

I received this article by Jason Lee Miller from WebProNews in my email this week and was amazed by the figures. It really does highlight the changing ways in which consumers are pursuaded to buy online. It is now more than ever an interactive experience rather than just the search and find mentality of a couple of years ago.

You expect to see Google at the top the of list in pretty much any search breakdown, followed distantly behind by Yahoo!. But would you, in any category, expect MSN to be outdone by MySpace? Online shopping just got a lot more social.

Hitwise reports MySpace generates more traffic to online shopping and classified sites than MSN. Ouch.

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