Daily Archives: September 4, 2006

MySpace driving more retail traffic than MSN search

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According to Techcrunch…

New Hitwise findings indicate that MySpace sent more US traffic to online retail sites last week than MSN search, the third largest search engine on the web. That’s big news, as it’s tangible evidence that youth oriented online social networking is a market driver of serious proportions.

The Hitwise report puts Yahoo! as the source of 4.69 percent of traffic to online retail sites, MySpace as 2.53 percent and MSN search at 2.33 percent for the week ending August 26th. Google leads the pack at 14.93 percent.

Search related advertising last year was a $5 billion market, still small compared to $22 billion in magazines and $74 billion for TV advertising – but the landscape is changing. The Financial Times ran an article on Tuesday about the belief that the shortage of marketers skilled in negotiating sites like MySpace and YouTube is one of the biggest barriers to the growth of advertising online.
Even in the short term, it’s still up in the air between the big players. Google’s advertising, which is generally believed to be more effective than that of competitors, hasn’t kicked in at MySpace yet. If Google can make MySpace search more bearable when it takes over in the fourth quarter of this year, then you can expect MySpace to drive more traffic to retail sites than ever. At the same time, IE 6 doesn’t have a native search box in the chrome of the browser and IE 7 will – to search either MSN or Live.com. We’ll have to compare these numbers with Live.com in the future…

Ageism at Carphone Warehouse?

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Hmmm… This is from the Daily Mail, so I’m not sure I believe it.

After walking the Great Wall of China and making plans for a trip to Russia, Shirley Greening-Jackson thought signing up for a new internet service would be a doddle.

But the young man behind the counter had other ideas. He said she was barred – because she was too old.

The 75-year-old would only be allowed to sign the forms for the Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk phone and broadband package if she was accompanied by a younger member of her family who could explain the small print to her.

Mrs Greening-Jackson, who sits on the board of several charities, said: “I was absolutely furious. The young man said, ‘Sorry, you’re over 70. It’s company policy. We don’t sign anyone up who is over 70.’

“Later a young lady said company policy is that anyone over 70 might not understand the contract. She said, ‘If you would be prepared to go to the shop in town and take a younger member of your family we might give you a contract.’

MySpace To Sell Music Through Snocap

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The move to the new ecology continues apace. TechCrunch reports:

MySpace is getting into the music business. They announced today that they will allow nearly 3 million unsigned bands to sell their music directly to Myspace users. Snocap will provide the back end technology for the service. The agreement also includes performance-based warrants to purchase stock in SnoCap (Fox recently took an equity stake in startup SimplyHired as well).

The music will be sold in MP3 format without copy protection of any kind (see eMusic and Amie Street for similar models, as well as others). This comes as major labels are starting to experiment with free music downloads, albeit with copy protection.

It’s unclear whether Myspace will also offer music from major labels pursuant to the deal. The agreement does not prohibit these sales, and Snocap has deals with most major labels.

Downloads of music from labels would require copy protection pursuant to Snocap’s existing deals. Look for additional deals from Myspace as they continue to develop their overall music (and revenue) strategy.

New York Times report on this here.