@ MWC: MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe Lays Out Mobile Strategy; Hypertargeting Mobile Ads To Users
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MySpace is moving quickly to establish itself on mobile, after growth of its mobile user base jumped 400 percent from last year, with just under a quarter of its users—or 20 million—accessing the popular social net from their cellphones. During this morning’s keynote, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe laid out some of the company’s strategy for taking its online success and translating it to mobile and how it planned to generate revenues in the space.
— User base: MySpace has 76 million unique online users in the US, and 139 million users worldwide; 40 percent of all Americans based in the US are on mySpace; and 40 percent of American mothers are on mySpace. Its hoping to capture the 600 million users that Jupiter Research has estimated will be accessing social networks through their phones by 2012. Currently, their mobile user base is 20 million. The social net is predicting that up to half of its users will access it through their phones. In the US, MySpace Mobile is number three, behind Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Yahoo—in terms of page views, according to comscore.
— Emerging Markets: MySpace has identified India and China as two countries that it would like to target, especially as their mobile phone user numbers are massive. China Mobile alone has some 460 million subscribers. China, DeWolfe said, was an especially “rich market” for games, and social networking, where specific nets have emerged for different provinces in the country and different classes of users. He quipped that there at least 30 of them were called mySpace.
More after the jump...
—New Partner Set: DeWolfe said MySpace recongnized that going mobile meant making nice with new partners, especially with operators and handset makers. On Tuesday they announced that they would be building applications for Nokia’s S60 series and Palm’s Pre. It currently has partnerships with 30 operators. De Wolfe said mySpace helped operators by taking voice customers and introducing them to data usage as well as taking data customers and increasing their level of data usage.
—Generating revenue through advertising: De Wolfe said their primary means of generating revenue would be from advertising. He said that online, advertising had “been knocked as a business model unfairly, especially after a lot of start-ups turned to it as a business model after they decided they needed to earn money, rather than thinking from day one how to create a site that could generate advertising revenue.
—Hypertarget: MySpace has been working on its monetization technology currently used online called Hypertarget, which is five algorithms that basically segments the “massive amounts of data” on mySpace users into “enthusiast buckets.” Currently, they have their audience divided into over 1,000 of these segments, and for example, if Pepsi wants to target alternative music users they can serve them up an ad. Said DeWolfe, “It’s incredibly effective, and increases our yields.” This will be moving onto mobile.
—Mobile advertising still an educational process: “It’s not just about educating the brand, but educating the media buying agency and educating the creative agency.”
Posted In: Entertainment, Social Media, Companies, MySpace, chris dewolfe
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