SI Social: Timberlake Uses Star Power To Hype MySpace TV
January 11th, 2012 by
[SI Social is a monthly series from Search Influence that looks at what’s going on in the social media world.]
It’s true that most of us may have had a MySpace profile some year ago, but if you’re anything like me, you probably only maintain one major social media profile at a time. So when Facebook got big enough, I pretty much forgot MySpace existed. Then they tried to rebrand and made that ridiculous new logo and you couldn’t help but feel a bit bad for the days when they were king of the social media space. After all, it’s gotta be weird to look back and wonder what changed, right?
Still, when you get the right people in place, they may even have the power to revive old social media giants. Take celeb Justin Timberlake, who is also the co-owner of MySpace. At this year’s CES, Timberlake kicked off the event Monday with some information about how the website is rebranding to include online discussion and real time television. The latter will be called MySpace TV, and it will encompass the site’s 42 million songs and 100,000 music videos. In other words, like a little YouTube right inside MySpace.
Why should you care, you ask? Well, Timberlake says television combined with social networking is the best big thing. “Why text or email your friends to talk about your favorite programs after they’ve aired when you could be sharing the experience with real-time interactivity from anywhere across the globe?” he says.
So the idea is to chat and interact while you watch TV, which in turn means you’ll pay less attention to the actual program and be more distracted than ever. No offense, Justin, but in this world of constant distraction, I hardly think we need more. Still, surely there will be some people who won’t let the glittery loud memories of MySpace weigh them down and give it a shot.
When it comes to social media, it seems it’s less about what features your site offers and more about where your friends are. For instance, with last year’s Google+ launch, many users seemed excited by the prospects of the new system and to give it a shot over Facebook. However, a few months after the launch, most people were still sitting on Facebook. Why? Not necessarily because it provides the superior networking service, but because their friends were still there — and they want to be where their friends are.
What do you think of interacting with friends via social media while you watch a show? Do you want that option? Would you rather just send a text? Or do you want to be drowned in all the social media you can handle and more?
