Category: marketing

The new Myspace (and the headline I never thought I’d see again)

There’s been a lot of PR and marketing chatter lately about the new Myspace. (That’s Myspace with a little “s” — not MySpace, which is so 2008.)

It’s shocking enough to learn that Myspace is launching a comeback. But even more shocking to my sensibilities was reading a headline like this one from PRDaily:

What brands need to know about the new Myspace

Wait. Wasn’t Myspace supposed to be dead? Didn’t we all abandon Tom’s site long ago to pursue the (then) up-and-coming upstarts Facebook and Twitter?

But apparently Myspace is undead — just in time for Halloween season. It’s making a comeback, and brands need to be ready, right?

Not so fast, fellow higher ed marketing types. While “it’s likely that brands will be welcome with open arms, eventually,” writes PRDaily’s Kevin Allen, it’s still uncertain how it will all play out. All signs point to Myspace focusing on the niche that made the original site popular in the first place: music. And according to Allen, “MySpace will likely skew younger,” since the kids love music. This means that Myspace should attract that college-age audience, and “therefore brands that target the 18-24 crowd will probably be early adopters.”

I can see a migration of college students from Facebook or Twitter to Myspace. Once their parents, uncles and brands — including their universities — get into their social media space, they tend to look elsewhere.

That’s certainly true with Facebook, once seen as the hot spot for teens, and Twitter, which was the subject of a rash of “teens don’t tweet” media reports a few years back. But at the university where I work, we’re seeing a rise in Twitter usage and a decline in Facebook usage among new students. In 2011, only 3 percent of our incoming freshmen said Twitter was their social media of choice. This fall, 14 percent did. Meanwhile, the percentage of freshmen choosing Facebook as their main social media platform declined from 93 percent in 2011 to 79 percent in 2012.

Why the change? The anecdotal reason I often hear is that, now that mom’s on Facebook, the kids want to hang out somewhere else.

But if mom follows the kids to Twitter, then where are they going to end up?

Myspace, perhaps?

Hard to say. Maybe the new Myspace should go up against Tumblr for social media supremacy with the younger crowd. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that people were proclaiming Tumblr as the new MySpace (with a big “S”), and now, some are calling the new Myspace the new Tumblr. So why not face off against Tumblr and let Facebook and Twitter increasingly focus on the “get off my lawn” crowd.

No matter what happens, we higher ed marketing types will need to keep an eye on the new Myspace. That doesn’t mean we need to chase this newly revarnished shiny object, though. Let’s heed the advice of a seasoned higher ed marketer, Michael Stoner, who in a recent post advises us to stay focused an “get to work on the really important channels,” whatever those may be for your institution. Stoner has a few suggestions. Go read his post.

Focus is apparently what the new Myspace is attempting. Maybe we should try it too.

But with a watchful eye on Myspace. So, let’s go reactivate our accounts, and let’s hope Tom hasn’t abandoned us.

Friday Five: The #highered Mind Set on the Beloit Mind Set List

There are five things you should know about this year’s class of higher ed social media commentators on this year’s Beloit Mind Set List.

The list, as we call it here at Higher Ed Marketing, is an annual compendium of zeitgeisty things we should all know about the incoming freshman class. An annual rite of fall for higher ed, much like the U.S. News & World Report rankings and The Princeton Review‘s “best party schools” list, the Mind Set List, according to Beloit’s press release, is intended to show us old-fogey higher ed types those secret “cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college.” This year’s list focuses on the Class of 2016 and puts their lives into context with one-liners like, “They have always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of “electronic narcotics” and “They have never seen an airplane ‘ticket.”

And the critics of this annual production? Ah, they are legion. Here are a few ways you can spot them as they infiltrate the Class of 2016’s addictive cyberworld:

1. They are clever, often acerbic spoofers of the actual list, as evidenced by the Twitter hashtag they created (#fakebeloitmindsetlist) to parody Beloit’s offering. Among the terse Twitter zingers since the list’s release:

2. They have always critiqued the list for its suspect research premise, and for its hyperbolic language (The Green Bay Packers have always celebrated with the Lambeau Leap and Martin Lawrence has always been banned from hosting Saturday Night Live). Well, at least since 2009.

3. They have never agreed completely about the merits of the list. Some view the Beloit list as a poor substitute for actually talking to students, while other laud Beloit’s approach from a branding and PR standpoint.

4. They sometimes forget that the Beloit Mind Set list is an unscientific compilation of pop culture factoids, and that it was created by a former PR guy at Beloit, in consultation with a humanities professor. So of course, it’s a PR ploy, designed to raise awareness of the institution.

5. They are probably all over 25, and therefore too old to be a social media manager.

Bonus attribute:

6. They carry on about the list for a week, sometimes longer, then promptly forget about for a year. Maybe this will be the last post of 2012 about the Beloit Mind Set List for the Class of 2016. We can only hope.