Keep Ya Head Up, Myspace

I know it’s easy to for­get about Myspace. After all, the for­mer third grade Spelling Bee star is now a high school junior water-boy while Face­book is the All-State QB.

But Myspace’s 57 mil­lion unique U.S. users – 27% of the U.S. Inter­net pop­u­la­tion — are noth­ing to scoff at. As recently as Decem­ber 2009, Myspace was the sec­ond most pop­u­lar social net­work­ing site in the U.S. Although Face­book is a dom­i­nant first, Myspace has sec­ond place on lock­down for the fore­see­able future.

Myspace still holds attention

The aver­age Myspace user vis­its the site 14 times per day (Dec 09) and spends an aver­age of just over 8 min­utes on the site per visit. I’m no math whiz, but that’s nearly 2 hours a day spent on Myspace. Sure, it’s not Face­book, but it’s 2 hours that your brand could be inter­act­ing with.

Myspace is younger

In Decem­ber 2009, 44.4% of Myspace users were 24 and under, up from 37% in Decem­ber 2008. In con­trast, 26.8% of Face­book users were 24 and under in Decem­ber 2009, down from 32.3% in Decem­ber 2008.

Myspace found a niche

Despite Face­book kick­ing their asses in over­all num­bers, a reded­i­ca­tion to Myspace Music led to a 98% growth in that area, accord­ing to Com­score. Per­son­ally, I know a lot of my friends in the music indus­try, some as strug­gling musi­cians and some as mar­keters, rely heav­ily on Myspace for band pro­mo­tion. Often times, it’s a small-time band’s main website.

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What does this mean?

1. Myspace holds pow­er­ful segments

I grew up an active mem­ber in the local music scene, and this con­tin­ued until a year or so ago. If there’s one thing I can say with cer­tainty, it’s that local bands have influ­ence. Lots of it. A friend of mine from high school, who also hap­pens to be the front man for a local group, once said to me, “I’m not sure if it’s pathetic or awe­some that when I say, “JUMP!”, they jump. But I know it’s pretty damn cool.”

2. Music is passion

Any­one who has ever played an instru­ment knows where I’m going here. Sadly, I had to sell my drum­set before col­lege, but I still get the shiv­ers every time I sit on a throne. Musi­cal artists, and their fans, are often deeply pas­sion­ate peo­ple. Music is just one out­put of this pas­sion. Find a way to tap into that pas­sion­ate nerve, and you will have some very strong brand advocates.

3. Mix it up

Old Spice just mixed it up by per­son­ally answer­ing tweets through Youtube videos. They took a tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing cam­paign and made it social by using Twit­ter, Youtube and Red­dit. They mixed it up and stood out because they did. How can you use Myspace to mix it up?

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Is Myspace right for every­one? No, but nei­ther is Face­book. Just because the main­stream declares some­thing as “dead” doesn’t mean you should for­get about.

Tupac’s been dead for years and is still putting out bet­ter albums than Justin Bieber.