According to one myth circulating on the Internet, Myspace.com is bigger than Google. That doesn’t entirely stand up
to close examination (especially on key topics such as revenue), but like
many myths, it reflects an important underlying truth. Myspace.com has
discovered a way to connect people that just plain sizzles, especially
with teens and young adults.
The idea is simple: You start with a profile page where you tell the
world about yourself, then add links to your friends. Throw in some
pictures, some personalization, some interest-based linking, and some
“post a comment” functionality. Pretty soon you have people establishing
friendship networks — and eagerly recruiting their friends to join.
Word-of-mouth marketing has made Myspace.com the No. 1 site in its
demographic target. Just ask a few teenagers. No wonder News Corp. shelled
out $580 million to get controlling interest.
But for many people, especially teens and young adults, most friends are
local. Is there a role to play for local media? Should local sites be
doing this?
Absolutely, says Dan Pacheco, senior product manager for the
Bakersfield Californian‘s new-products group. He has been working
for some time to get profile networks
added to Bakotopia.com, the twentysomething-targeted community
website that the newspaper is using to counter an incursion by Craigslist.
The result: Bakotopia’s daily visitor count and daily page-views both
tripled in just a few weeks. So he has added profiling to Northwest Voice, the community
journalism project targeted at suburbanites, and Mas Bakersfield, a
Latino-targeted site.
“I’m starting to think that profiles and social networking could save
newspapers and the media industry at large,” he said in an e-mail.
“They’re like blogs for normal people.”
Yes, but does it have anything to do with journalism? I think it does. I
believe one of the key roles of journalism is to help a community see
itself — and these interconnected profiles are undeniably visible. They
help transform a site from a solitary to a social experience. And as the
Bakersfield experiments show, they attract users and usage.
