MySpace News is making a big splash in the social networking site scene. The news feature, released in Beta mid April of this year, allows MySpace users to rate each article and so far has received excellent feedback from users and publishers. At a glance, MySpace News seems like every other news aggregator with user ranking capabilities. But a closer look reveals that MySpace accurately sorts all stories into 25 categories with 300 subcategories, streamlining archives so users can find exactly what they’re looking for. And MySpace has another advantage—its colossal user base… nearly 43 million active account holders means lots of interaction.
TechNewsWorld.com posted a related MySpace News article that included an interview with Sterling Market Intelligence online media analyst Greg Sterling. Sterling agreed that MySpace News has such potential due to its immense popularity: “a smaller competitor… would be greeted with lot of skepticism in a way MySpace isn't because of its position in the marketplace.”
To introduce the news feature to frequent users, MySpace implemented a large colorful banner on its login page. With each page reload, the banner markets a different category (i.e.: fashion, entertainment, music, video games, sports, etc.) and links to the corresponding News page. This is a smart marketing technique because it minimizes the perpetual “boring” connotation of “News” by emphasizing current, popular themes.
As Sterling points out, “Young people are not as interested in the news as older people… There is a potential [with MySpace News] to expose interesting and important news stories to an entirely new audience.”
Giving MySpace users the power to rank articles is another smart approach to get them interested and involved. The same TechNewsWorld.com article described that “the ratings directly affect the ‘placement and prominence’ of the stories, including whether they make the MySpace News homepage.” Give users a voice and they are likely to respond positively.
In addition to benefiting the readers, MySpace News also represents a great avenue for featured bloggers. Featured bloggers can expect adequate exposure due to the site’s popularity and high traffic rank.
For more information, check out these MySpace News FAQs especially if you’re interested in submitting blog articles to MySpace News.
2 comments:
I love MySpace News. I can't wait until they add a commenting feature so we can all talk about the news. I'm 38 years old and will use this service on a daily basis. It's not just kids.
A commenting feature would be useful. I really enjoy the fact that we can rank the stories and search for such specific categories.
Thanks for the comment!
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