News
A rocky week for social networks as Facebook’s Free Basics is effectively banned in India, Twitter’s user growth stalls, and MySpace briefly re-enters the public consciousness.
Like the collision of two ancient black holes on the other side of the universe, until this week, no one had paid MySpace any attention for the last 1.3 billion years.
On Thursday, an Einsteinian ripple of excitement swept across the Internet when it emerged that publisher Time Inc has agreed to acquire digital marketing specialist and MySpace parent Viant for an undisclosed fee.
For those devout followers of telecoms – knee deep in networks and 5G hype cycles – who might not have heard of Viant, it was called Interactive Media Holdings until a rebrand in January 2015.
Interactive Media Holdings owns ad network Specific Media, which acquired MySpace for US$35 million from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2011. Eyebrows everywhere were raised in unison when singer Justin Timberlake joined in, spending some of his own money for a MySpace stake of his own. I have a theory that he was still in character as Napster founder and early Facebook investor Sean Parker after playing him in 2010’s The Social Network, but that’s a whole other Friday Review.
Anyway, MySpace stats are hard to come by these days, but Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook was cited this week by TechCrunch as saying that it gets 20 million-50 million visitors per month.
In January 2014, Vanderhook told the Wall Street Journal that MySpace has 50 million monthly visitors. He said that Thursdays are particularly busy because people retrieve old pictures for Twitter’s ‘Throwback Thursdays’, which is pretty tragic when you think about it.
No one is suggesting at this point that Time will use MySpace to take on Facebook like some former heavyweight making an ill-advised return to the ring. Rather, the acquisition of Viant is all about the ad tech.
"Marketers are selecting media partners that have either data-driven capabilities or premium content; we will be able to deliver both in a single platform, and will stand apart from those that offer just one or the other," said Time CEO Joe Ripp. "In other words, we will be able to deliver advertisers’ messages targeted to optimal audiences across all types of devices, along with the ability to measure ROI."
As fond as people are of the world’s first big social network, it wouldn’t be a shock to see MySpace spun off again once Time gets down to integrating Viant.
It could even go the way of Friends Reunited, which is due to shut down altogether later this month after a 15-year run. It was arguably irrelevant for 10 of those 15 years, as Facebook rose up to rule the world.
That’s not to say the current heavy hitters in the world of social media have got it easy.
Facebook suffered a setback this week when the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) outlawed services that offer low-cost or free access to a limited selection of online content on the grounds that they undermine net neutrality.
That decision effectively bans Free Basics, an Internet service provided by Facebook-owned Internet.org that gives free access to a selection of Websites.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post that he was disappointed with the decision, but insisted that he will "keep working to break down barriers to connectivity in India and around the world."
Web veteran and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen did not take the news with the same grace, penning this ill-thought out missive on Twitter: "Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?"
Andreessen later apologised for the remark, but did not escape a public dressing down from Zuck.
"I found the comments deeply upsetting, and they do not represent the way Facebook or I think at all," he said.
There can be no doubt the TRAI’s decision is a setback for Facebook, albeit a medium-term one.
With India’s mobile subscriber base crossing the 1 billion mark at the end of 2015, it represents a huge addressable market. However, mobile data uptake, while growing rapidly, is still in the early stages of development, partly because of network availability but also because of the higher price of services and devices. Without Free Basics to lower the cost barrier to Facebook, it will take longer for the social network to capitalise on the opportunity that India represents.
Facebook arguably still had a better week than Twitter though.
The social media site on Wednesday published fourth-quarter results showing 320 million monthly active users, flat compared to the third quarter.
Revenue jumped to $710.47 million from $479.08 million a year ago, and net loss narrowed to $90.24 million from $125.35 million, but it was the stalling user growth that captured the headlines and sent Twitter’s share price downwards.
Twitter also introduced on Wednesday a new algorithmic timeline that disregards chronology and instead places Tweets that it thinks the user might find particularly interesting at the top of their newsfeed.
This feature can be switched off, but it nonetheless caused consternation among some users, who expressed their displeasure in a typically understated way, using a hashtag (what else?): #RIPTwitter.
Twitter also used Safer Internet Day on Tuesday to launch its Trust & Safety Council, which will tap the expertise of 40 online safety organisations in a bid to ensure that users feel safe when expressing themselves on Twitter. This news was also met with outrage, but mostly by the sort of people you wouldn’t want to converse with on the Internet anyway.
All in all then, a pretty big week in the world of social media, the ripple effect of which may be felt for a long time…but probably not 1.3 billion years.
