MySpace: "we need to innovate more rapidly"

 

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Posted on 28 May 2009 at 10:50

MySpace's new chief executive has admitted the social network needs to "innovate a lot more rapidly" if it wants to keep pace with Facebook.

Owen Van Natta - formerly Facebook's chief revenue officer - was parachuted in as MySpace's chief executive last month in a bid to boost the faltering social network.

Speaking at the All Things Digital conference, Van Natta claimed users had begun to drift away from MySpace because it wasn't offering them new services quickly enough.

"If you don't continue to innovate people are going to shift interest elsewhere," he said. "We need to continue to innovate a lot more rapidly than we have been."

Asked how he was going to close the gap on Facebook, Van Natta claimed the social network needed to put itself back in the spotlight and make use of its community.

"Certainly we're not the darling of the press right now, that's pretty clear," said Van Natta. "But we already have 130 million people that are coming to the site every day. There's a lot of self-expression that is happening [on MySpace], we need to seize on that."

Van Natta also touched on MySpace's ads deal with Google, which is reportedly worth around $300 million a year to the company. Reports claim Google is looking to renegotiate better terms.

"That's an important deal for us, but it certainly isn't a majority of our revenue," Van Natta said. "With these long-term deals, you need to figure out how to make them work. The most important thing is how Google is going to feel at the end of this partnership."

Author: Stuart Turton