It's All About Music: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace

Ethan Beard, director of Facebook‘s developer network, was quick to point out that Spotify has seen a fourfold increase in traffic since integrating Facebook Connect with its service. This, argues Beard, is the world’s largest social network’s contribution to music: rather than building its own music service, Facebook has instead focused on “allowing [content] companies to build great experiences on top of our content, be it jobs, travel or any type of services.” Inevitably, said Beard, “industries will be rethought around social.” And with250 million people per month logging into Facebook Connect via 3rd-party sites, many industries already are. Why? Because “people prefer to stay on Facebook” rather than go elsewhere on the web, claimed Beard. Or at least within the Facebook ecosystem. Farmville creators Zynga saw a 50% increase in revenues after introducing in-game purchases with Facebook credits (the network’s own currency), said Beard. This comes just as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has clearly stated his intention to make the social network a content platform; as Facebook is rumoured to be in talks with content giants such as Time Warner to further integrate Facebook Connect with their own platforms; and as the company’s EMEA head of bizdev told MIPBlog readers how to optimise their content for the social network. Watch this space… As for Twitter, the company’s VP of product, Jason Goldman, may well be leaving the company imminently: as a founding member of the firm, he knows where its priorities are. When asked if the right-hand panel of the redesigned Twitter (photo) is “the new content platform”, he confirmed “in the future it will be a new place for innovation & showing content“, notably citing the possibility to stream iTunes music samples directly from that panel. Finally, MySpace‘s CEO, Mike Jones, explained how the site is reinventing itself as a content platform having accepted “we were not going to win in social networking.” Instead, said Jones, “we want to be the best at connecting the content, at this entertainment experience.” Hence Myspace’s recent integration with Facebook; and above all is new value proposition: to enable users to “participate in the content around whatever it is you like, be it Glee, Tron, or whatever.” So no longer just music; yet tunes remain a key focus for the (admittedly) ailing NewsCorp property. Jones said app development is now a “big part” of MySpace’s business, notably citing one app which tracks what you’re listening to on iTunes and pulls up related extra content from artists’ MySpace profiles. Good idea!

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