The COO and president of News Corp. (NWS-A) Peter Chernin, said that the online community site MySpace will be a priority for the company and will be heavily invested in this year by News Corp. He added that they must be careful not to mess around with the company too much so they don't alienate users of the Web site.
"Our job is to continue to do a couple of things. One, is to not screw it up, not make it restrictive or look to Fox-ify it," Chernin said. "Beyond that you have to continue to give users new tools. You don't shove it down their throat but you do offer them new ones and see what they like."
He added that they will also be focusing on expanding overseas as their goal is to not just to dominate social networking in the U.S., but globally as well.
Another point well-taken, was that according to Chernin the reason the site remains successful is that people are given choices on whether they want to use the continuous new services offered by the company.
This is more important than seems on the surface, as many people don't want to go through the endless process of adapting, changing and learning how to use new services. Most people, in these types of areas, like to keep things simple so they can do what they want, and not have to continually relearn how to do things.
He also said that it was important to not interfere with many users' desire to post links that are on their MySpace sites to the sites of competitors like YouTube (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) Video and Flickr.
Another point Chernin made concerning monetizing online video is that marketers will probably go to the copyrighted online versions of video, rather than the user-generated video space.
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