MySpace is crowded; Amanda Beard is a 'GoDaddy Girl'
NEW YORK -- Now part of the company's Fox Interactive unit, MySpace remains the Internet's biggest social-networking site, with 200 million registered profiles and 100 million unique users a month.
But social networking has become a crowded, intensely competitive business.
MySpace's top rival is Facebook, now one of the hottest Web brands, which is registering new users at a rate of 150,000 a day.
The sites also are a hot new thing with marketers. Social-networking-site users bare personal data as well as their souls in creating their profiles, and these advertisers see huge potential in using that information, if allowed, to precisely target users with sales pitches.
Fox says revenue for the interactive unit will top $1 billion for its fiscal year ending in June.
Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett, 45, is in charge of making sure Fox Interactive's properties click with marketers.
Before joining Fox in 2006, Barrett was at AOL for four years, rising to head of sales and partner marketing. He bailed, he says, because he felt AOL was too hung up on its dialup business in a broadband world.
He spoke with USA TODAY about MySpace and its future.
Q: Given Facebook's rapid growth, are you concerned that MySpace could become the dialup of social networking?
A: If you looked at the press 18 months ago, you couldn't pick up an article or watch a TV show without hearing about MySpace founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe as the media darlings.
Now, Facebook is the next media darling, and in between there was YouTube. They are highly differentiated products. We are seeing growth in both.
A. How are they different?
Q. Facebook is very much about keeping in touch with current friends. MySpace is about keeping in touch with current friends and meeting new friends.
Q: Has MySpace lost some of its early cool factor because of Facebook?
A: I don't think the shine has come off one product and transferred to the other. It's a new product.
When the dust settles, there will be another cool thing that the news will be writing about.
Q: As users continue to grow, how have advertisers changed their view of social networking?
A: Over the course of the past 12 to 14 months, it's gone from dipping a toe in the water to making bigger investments.
Marketers are saying, "Social media is on my budget." And there's going to be plenty of room for us and competitors.
Q: A year ago, it was a big step for a marketer to create a free profile at MySpace. What's to stop an advertiser from just continuing to create a brand profile rather than paying for your ad services?
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