Evolution of Myspace from a social networking website to a marketing superstore

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For the past couple of years Myspace has been slowly turning into a website where kids and bands can ‘add friends’, share pictures and leave comments into a site where Internet and offline marketers are shilling anything from t-shirts to the next beauty product. The basic premise of Myspace has always been as a social networking website for friends and bands, so was this to be expected?

In my opinion yes, this was to be expected. Opportunity seekers abound everywhere and Myspace is no different. Although kids and bands (and even older adults to a lesser extent) can still do what Myspace was built for, they now have to deal with the phenomenon of marketing spam, or what I like to refer to it as the “telemarketing effect”. Marketers are doing the same exact thing that people and machines have been doing for years when they call your home and entice you to sign up or purchase something. It’s as automatic as ever with certain software now making it even easier than before, too.

But is the marketing worthwhile? Yes, it most definitely is. With millions of people logging in everyday to chat, leave comments, read email, how could you blame marketers for wanting to cash in on this segment? You really can’t. Marketers will do either one of two things to try to market to a Myspace user. They will either send a mass bulletin, or, leave a comment that has a link back to their product, website, or service.

So what can you do to avoid this marketing spam if you’re fed up with it? You can always report the spam to Myspace if you feel that it’s unwarranted. If you added a friend to your social networking group that you may not really know, it could always be a marketer hiding behind the guise of a young person who wants you to be aware of the newest trend, device, website purporting to do “something”. This is another tactic of the Myspace marketer: take on the guise of someone young (probably female), send out mass invites, and then get ready to send bulletins and comments out to all of their “new friends”.

Even if those bulletins and comments reach 5 people out of 100 “friends”, and those 5 people purchase something, that’s a 20% conversion rate for something that was absolutely free to do in advertising.

You see where this is going? Time will tell to see how Myspace handles all these mass bulletins and comments selling items and services. I don’t think we’ll see a “do not call” box, but I’m sure we will see some maneuvering on Myspace’s part to cut down on marketing activities.

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