The MySpace MTV Chart
Posted on 07 March 2008 by Graham Brown
Following on from our earlier post on Consumer Generated Content, business models that seem to offer the most value to the consumer occupy the middle ground between brand leadership and open-source do-as-you-feel consumer-generated whatever type scenarios.
Content is a tool to facilitate social interaction. You talk about the latest football game, soap, drama, music with your friends to reinforce peer group bonds and in some cases assert status by possessing a better opinion, inside knowledge etc. Similarly, content defines relationships with those both “in” and “out” of the peer group.
As in any social environment, youth behavioral dynamics require that there are leaders and followers. Leaders set the tone of the peer group and introduce new trends, ideas and social benefits to the followers. The followers then collectively accept the role of the leader as the best positioned individual to fulfil this role.
In this context, MySpace possesses many of the attributes required to create a behavioral platform for young consumers to facilitate social interaction. Not all peers can achieve stardom, but everyone is free to follow. So it makes sense that MySpace should consolidate its position by partnering with MTV2 and giving those that seek peer group status a platform in “traditional” media.
According to the Guardian
The show, called The MySpace Chart, will be shown on the MTV2 channel.
It will feature the best music videos as voted for by viewers watching the channel and MySpace users of the forthcoming mtv.co.uk/myspacechart website.
Each week fans will get to vote on 35 to 40 videos from the MTV2 playlist.
In addition five videos from new bands and artists will be promoted on both the MTV2 website and the channel’s homepage on MySpace.
The show launched on March 16 at 7pm.
“The audience for MTV2 and MySpace are incredibly similar,” said Philip O’Ferrall, the vice-president of digital media at MTV Networks UK & Ireland.
mobileYouth comment
MySpace still continues to defy the naysayers by adopting an approach to media distribution more concurrent with News Corp than Facebook. Youth have watched their parents gatecrash the Facebook party in the same way they witnessed them squeezing into a pair of Levi’s 501s back in the 80s. Levi’s approach to innovation was feature led very much in the way that technologists tout FB as a web2.0 success. Ironically, youth have little time for “web2.0″ - it’s a concept that resonates with the mobile and internet industries not the consumer.
What young consumers want is social tools such as music to facilitate social interaction and MySpace appears to be reinforcing its position as the default provider creating a barrier to adult interlopers who may feel that MySpace offers business networking potential that FB manifested when it started going global.
