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MySpace Aims for a Global Audience, and Finds Some Stiff Competition
A couple of months ago, Robert Basic, a 40-year-old technology consultant in Frankfurt, signed up for MySpace, the online social networking site, mostly out of curiosity.
In September, MySpace opened public test pages for Germany and France, the company’s first versions in languages other than English. That month, the site had 2.5 million unique users in Germany and about half that in France, respectable numbers for a new venture.
But Mr. Basic was only briefly among them. “I’m not a typical user,” he said. He became frustrated by unwanted messages and he did not care for the flashy pages.
“People here think the design is bad,” he said, “and that is important for Germans.”
MySpace, which was purchased by the News Corporation in July, is aggressively trying to move into overseas markets, and is expected to announce today that it is expanding into Japan in a possible joint venture.
With a presence already in Britain, Australia, Ireland, Germany and France, the company plans to add 11 other countries in the coming year, said Chris DeWolfe, the chief executive. Over the summer, Mr. DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, the company’s co-founders, went to China with Wendi Deng, the wife of Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, and met with possible partners.
But as Mr. Basic’s experience shows, turning MySpace into a global power could be far more complicated than marketing a movie overseas. While the company has 100 million registered users, most are in the United States. People outside the United States already have different habits about socializing online.
And many do so by using cellphones rather than computers.
“In the U.S., teen and 20-something culture is more about I.M.,” instant messaging, said Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California, who studies popular culture and technology. In other countries, “the primary way of talking to your friends is SMS,” text messages on mobile phones.
Subject as it is to the whims of young people, the social networking business can be hard to predict. For example, Orkut.com, a social networking site started by Google, now consists mostly of Brazilians. After the site went online, Portuguese speakers attracted more Portuguese speakers, to the point where those who did not understand the language felt alienated.
“MySpace seems to be doing pretty well so far,” said Nate Elliot, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research, of the site’s international expansion. “But you have very little control over where these things take off.”
In Germany, MySpace must compete with Studivz.net, a site aimed at students that works much like the American site Facebook. In France, the company will compete with Skyblogs, which in August, the last month for which data is available, attracted 5.9 million unique visitors as opposed to the 1.1 million MySpace had in France, according to comScore.
Europe also has dozens of sites aimed at relatively small groups of people, which would not really compete with MySpace but could potentially limit its appeal in some markets if European consumers prefer a local experience.
Facebox, which is based in Brussels, for example, operates pages in different languages separately, on the logic that people prefer to join a more intimate network.
Something that will help MySpace compete, Ms. Boyd said, is the site’s emphasis on music. In the United States, the way bands of all sizes and music fans embraced the site helped it beat local competitors such as Friendster. In countries with established sites, “what MySpace is offering is music,” she said. And to compete effectively, it will have to attract local bands.
Mr. DeWolfe agrees. “It’s important to have something that reflects the local culture,” he said. Many MySpace hallmarks will remain, like secret shows from bands with pages on the site. But they will feature local artists, selected by local employees.
“They know what’s cool,” Mr. DeWolfe said. “The idea behind internationalization is localization.” Already, according to Jamie Kantrowitz, senior vice president for marketing and content for MySpace in Europe, the site has offered users a chance to hear albums by French rock bands before they were available in stores.
Since MySpace has never spent much money on advertising or content, it need not push its competitors aside to make a profit. “Our goal is to be No. 1 in every market,” Mr. DeWolfe said, “but we’re not so arrogant as to think we will be No. 1 in every market.”
As in the United States, the international versions of the site will make most of their revenue from selling ads. But some of the impetus for expansion may come partly from the site’s parent company.
“News Corporation is global,” said Allen Weiner, research director at Gartner Inc. “If they’re going to use the strategy they’re using in the U.S. — which is that MySpace is a portal but also a platform for content delivery — then each and every market is important.” So there’s a lot riding on this.”
