MySpace ends its fight against Facebook
NEW YORK - MySpace’s battle with Facebook is over, and the News Corp.-owned website is focused on a “fundamentally different’’ experience providing entertainment content, said Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta.
“I really don’t view Facebook as a competitor,’’ Van Natta said in an interview yesterday. “I personally have a Facebook account, and I use it to communicate with my friends and my family. And I have a MySpace account that I use primarily to interact with other people in and around content.’’
MySpace introduced music features yesterday for artists and fans, part of an effort by Van Natta, 39, to focus on building entertainment programming since joining the company in April. Van Natta, the former chief operating officer of Facebook, is trying to reverse what researcher eMarketer projects will be a 14 percent drop in advertising on MySpace this year.
Van Natta said he’s building the MySpace user experience around the “socialization’’ of entertainment, including leveraging exclusive licensing deals with the world’s biggest music labels. Videos and online games are also a focus.
MySpace Music Videos will be a clearinghouse for videos from all the major record labels, the Los Angeles company said yesterday. It will include artist catalogs, as well as user recommendations on what to watch, a browsing tool, and a video player with “Buy’’ buttons.
Videos from the MySpace catalog also will be played on other social networks including Facebook as a result of the company’s recent acquisition of online music-sharing service iLike, Van Natta said. A new MySpace Artist Dashboard will provide a free data and analytics tool for musicians.
“The licenses that we have gotten through our partnerships are different from everybody else out there,’’ Van Natta said.
