MySpaceTV challenges for the title
June 28th, 2007 by Lloyd Gofton
MySpace has relaunched its video service as MySpaceTV, complete with its own URL - www.myspacetv.com and individual versions tailored for 15 different countries.
The site will be totally independent so that people can visit to share and watch video, even if they’re not signed up for MySpace.
MySpace currently attracts 110 million users a month and this new, or revamped, service will also offer ways for members to easily integrate the videos that they create into their personal profiles.
However, MySpaceTV is also set to move away from user generated content (UGC) and place more emphasis on professionally produced material, including programming from News Corporation’s NBC Universal and Fox channels.
To date UGC has not been a big money spinner in terms of attracting advertisers to video, and if your focus is monetising video, well of course it is, then the safest bet is professional clips.
Furthermore, MySpace has the advantage here, as although it will need to invest in content deals in the same way that YouTube has, it already has access to content from the News Corp family, see above.
So how far away is MySpaceTV from YouTube? Well, according to a Hitwise survey measuring US visits to video sharing sites in May, YouTube is still very much the leader with a 60 per cent market share. MySpace came second with 16 per cent, and Google Video third with 8 per cent.
Pretty far then. But expect that gap to fall dramatically.
The NY Times has the full story.
