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.
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Depends on the type of business I would say. And if you can promote your business through word of mouth within this relationship portal. (word of mouth = trust = promotion)
To elaborate on the answer above I dont think MySpace would be suitable for a product like ours. (Think Im the only poster here selling a real physical product i.e. wooden flooring.)
As far as I understand the power of MySpace, businesses could benefit from creating word of mouth (and word of mouth can even create hypes like mentioned in The Tipping Point) for products/services readily available everywhere. The market we aim at is too local (East Kent) also to even try to create word of mouth on MySpace, so Im out ;-)
I tend to agree with you Karin. If you can nail down your ideal target customer. For example: Mid 20’s, large disposible income, interested in model aeroplanes. MySpace becomes wonderful for a model aeroplane seller. I don’t think people want to form clubs about wooden flooring and there wonderful designs and chat all day about how to install them. Advice forums would be better for this (as you have already proved with your site).
However for a business whose product can be easily identified with a particuar group of buyers, it can certainly work well. It could (and has) worked well for creative people such as musicians and artists. For example: you are an budding singer songwriter. You set up your profile and go search for similar types of performers. Join their groups get involved and be interested. Then when the opportunity arises recommend to your “friends” to go check out your sounds. They are already into your type of music so are more likely to like it and then spread the word for you.
So conclusion (?): if your product/service can be made widely availalbe and you are able to create a ‘buzz’ through word of mouth (and there are various - secret - ways to encourage the ‘buzz’) MySpace is the Place for you: no large outlet of money, large ‘audience’.
That would be the reason that Amazon, YourTube etc are ‘promoting’ MySpace?
Sounds about spot on. Couldn’t have summed it up better myself.
p.s. Karin, is this your way of getting us to move onto the next subject?
p.p.s Mike, I wouldn’t dare ;-)
(Although, could think of a few,
like informing ‘commentators’ automagical when there’s a new comment added?)