Asked to comment on The Daily’s performance, Carey says it’s a work in progress, which lost $10 million last quarter. Then, in the background, someone — most likely CFO Dave DeVoe, mentions “800,000 downloads”.
News Corp. Revenue, Earnings Miss; MySpace Still Burning Money
You can follow me on Twitter or go ahead and hire me.
Every time I hear about mass layoffs at Myspace, where hundreds get booted, I always wonder what it is exactly that those people did there.
MySpace Fires Another 300, This Time Abroad
News Corp (NWS) social network MySpace will reduce its international staff from 450 employees to around 150. Earlier this month, MySpace laid-off 400 domestically.
“With roughly half of MySpace’s total user base coming from outside the U.S., maintaining productive and efficient operations in our international markets is important to users worldwide and our immediate financial strength,†said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta in a statement.
I’ve been on a much-needed mini vacation for the last four days and this is my first time on the internet since Wednesday. If you’ve commented on one of my posts in that time period and the comment got eaten, I apologize. I moderate all comments and whenever I’m gone for an extended period of time I’m unable to gather the motivation to read through 800 spam comments to pick out a few legitimate ones.
Anyway, here are some media-related links
1. This is pretty scary. Someone placed a hoax craigslist ad announcing an everything-must-go giveaway at a house. The only problem? It wasn’t placed by the owner — and he returned to his house to find people literally looting it. And when he tried to stop them from taking his possessions, the people showed him print-outs from the craiglist ad and refused to give anything back. I smell a pending sociological experiment that could come out of this; something based on the effects of advertising and a level of entitlement that accompanies any sort of ad.
2. We’ve seen a number of incidents recently in which some brutal crime or tragedy occurred that involved a social networking site in some way. The most recent example is a teen male who killed his father because his Myspace account had been deleted.
3. The New Yorker has a long feature article about the demise of the print newspaper industry and what its online future may entail. Scarily enough, the reporter picked The Huffington Post as the example of the future of newspapers. Why is this scary? Because The Huffington Post doesn’t pay many of its star writers. I’m not talking about user-generated content, I’m talking about professional writers who write for the site for free while it soaks of millions in advertising dollars.
4. Ever wonder what bloggers who write for Gawker websites pull in for salaries? We’ve known for some time that they’re paid in part based on the number of page views they attract. Now we have some sense of the actual figures in their pay checks.
Though I’ve done a number of call-in interviews with radio and TV shows, last night I had my first on-camera interview. I went on G4′s Attack of the Show and talked about the newly-launched Myspace developer platforms and whether they would save Myspace. You can find the video over here and also embedded below.
If I had to grade my performance I would give myself a low C. My eyes were darting all over the place because I wasn’t very good at looking directly at the camera and there were definitely times I stuttered way too much and didn’t make my points very concisely. I must say it isn’t easy staring into the camera and relying solely on an ear piece to try and understand what’s going on (I couldn’t actually see the people I was talking to.) I’m hoping that these faults are only due to me being a newcomer to this and not an indicator that my on-air persona totally sucks.
The day has finally arrived. Last Sunday I declared January 30th to be International Delete Your Myspace Account Day. The idea quickly caught fire, being linked to on hundreds of websites spanning from Digg to Fark to MSNBC. Several journalists interviewed me about the day, including live radio and television interviews. I was also interviewed by a journalist at the Washington Post. A Myspace spokeswoman even responded to the event.
Many of the people who linked and commented on my post agreed with me whole-heartedly: Myspace sucks. And to drive that message home, we’re finally disposing of our useless profile pages all together on one day.
So if you’ve deleted your Myspace page today, tell us about your experience in the comments section. Several people have emailed me over the last few days to tell me that they tried to delete their profiles only for the confirmation email never to be sent. If this happens to you, it’s a serious issue that Myspace needs to address. Please let us know about it.
If anyone needs to contact me about this day, you can email me at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com for more information.
Below is a list of steps for you to delete your profile. I already tried them on my own myspace page. Supposedly Myspace is supposed to delete it within 48 hours. We’ll see if that happens.
Now, the steps:
1. Log in at Myspace.com
2. Click on “account settings” next to your profile picture
3. Click on the “cancel account” link at the bottom of the screen
4. On this screen it tells you to confirm your cancellation. It also provides you a box to explain why you’re canceling your account. To really drive home the message, you should put “Because it’s International Delete Your Myspace Account Day” as your reason. That will let them know that you’re deleting the account because of the cause.
5. You should receive an email that will allow you to “confirm” (hey, didn’t I already “confirm” it like two clicks ago? Myspace sure doesn’t want me to leave) your cancellation. After you’ve once again confirmed it, it tells you to give it 48 hours to complete the cancellation.
6. If your profile doesn’t disappear in 48 hours, raise bloody hell.
Good luck everyone! Happy cancellation!
–Simon
UPDATE: New Matilda has published a feature article about the event.
UPDATE 2: Here’s a video clip from one television news station that covered the event. Here is the story done by the Washington Post.
UPDATE 3: Another TV news station does a report about International Delete Your Myspace Account Day. (The video is on the righthand side)
UPDATE 4: News.com, the publication that had the response from the Myspace spokeswoman, has published a follow-up article after interviewing me. It includes an additional non-response from Myspace.
UPDATE: International Delete Your Myspace Account Day is finally here!
A few days ago, I declared January 30th International Delete Your Myspace Account Day.
Not long after it was posted, it got picked up and spread all the way from Digg to MSNBC’s website. Given this fact, I knew it was only a matter of time before Myspace took notice.
Today, in a news article on news.com titled “Myspace signs deal to screen BBC show,” Rebekah Horne, vice president of Fox Interactive Media and MySpace in Australia and New Zealand, had this to say about the event:
One blogger has declared January 30th “International Delete Your MySpace Account Day”.
But MySpace doubts that this will have a great impact on their network.
“This Delete-Your-MySpace day is just about being controversial,” Ms Horne said.
“MySpace is still the biggest social networking site in the world.”
In the words of BBC comedian Catherine Tate, MySpace does not look bothered.
In other news, a journalist for a news wire service interviewed me today about the event — news has continued to spread about IDYMAD.
Bloggasm is a blog run by Simon Owens that focuses on the media, with an emphasis on online media and journalism. It often features interviews with prominent bloggers, authors and journalists. If you want to request an interview, just drop us a line.
simon.bloggasm@gmail.com
