Ah, yes (continuing from markalburger-2014.blogspot.com),
another
year...
having
blogged
the
past
seven
(eight, counting the
Myspace* one --
now publicly inaccessible, though just downloaded and archived; so, will probably have to do something about that...).
On,
to a New Year's Day with Claire
(who is becoming a great artist --
and speedy --
occasionally sleepy -- one at that!), Tisha and
Harriet
(who both already are!),
videos in the
mix,
beginning the editing re Portraits of ___(Some Multiple of Three) Women: I. Teacher in Red Glasses
-- after the painting by Roland "Rodie" March and Johannes Ockeghem (apparently the first composer -- Renaissance one, at that -- to be depicted wearing spectacles): his Missa "Ma Maistresse": I. Kyrie I, given an early-20th-Century Picasso / Stravinsky / Neoclassic / Dixieland Jazz spin, in modality, pantonality, syncopation, and New-Orleans-style orchestration... Clarinet, Trumpet, Trombone, Tuba, Banjo, Piano, Drums... The "teacher" aspect acknowledged by the troped mass Chanson source ("My Mistress") and the overall pedagogic context, possible Arizona / Southwest connection by a singing style evoking Hopi / Navajo values...
***
*From Wikipedia Myspace article...
". . . By late 2007 and into 2008, Myspace was considered the leading social networking site, and consistently beat out main competitor Facebook in traffic. Initially, the emergence of Facebook did little to diminish Myspace's popularity; at the time, Facebook was targeted only at college students. At its peak, when News Corp attempted to merge it with Yahoo! in 2007, Myspace was valued at $12 billion.
On April 19, 2008, Facebook overtook Myspace in the Alexa rankings. Since then, Myspace has seen a continuing loss of membership, and there are several suggestions for its demise, including the fact that it stuck to a "portal strategy" of building an audience around entertainment and music, whereas Facebook and Twitter continually launched new features to improve the social-networking experience.
A former Myspace executive suggested that the $900 million three-year advertisement deal with Google, while being a short-term cash windfall, was a handicap in the long run. That deal required Myspace to place even more ads on its already heavily advertised space, which made the site slow, more difficult to use, and less flexible. Myspace could not experiment with its own site without forfeiting revenue, while rival Facebook was rolling out a new clean site design. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe reported that he had to push back against Fox Interactive Media's sales team who monetized the site without regard to user experience.
While Facebook focused on creating a platform that allowed outside developers to build new applications, Myspace built everything in-house. Shawn Gold, Myspace's former head of marketing and content, said "Myspace went too wide and not deep enough in its product development. We went with a lot of products that were shallow and not the best products in the world". The products division had introduced many features (communication tools such as instant messaging, a classifieds program, a video player, a music player, a virtual karaoke machine, a self-serve advertising platform, profile-editing tools, security systems, privacy filters, and Myspace book lists, among others). However, the features were often buggy and slow as there was insufficient testing, measuring, and iterating.
danah boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, noted of social networking websites that Myspace and others were a very peculiar business—one in which companies might serially rise, fall, and disappear, as "Influential peers pull others in on the climb up—and signal to flee when it's time to get out". The volatility of social networks was exemplified in 2006 when Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal launched an investigation into children's exposure to pornography on Myspace; the resulting media frenzy and Myspace's inability to build an effective spam filter gave the site a reputation as a "vortex of perversion". Around that time, specialized social media companies such as Twitter formed and began targeting Myspace users, while Facebook rolled out communication tools which were seen as safe in comparison to Myspace. boyd compared the shift of white, middle-class kids from the "seedy" Myspace to the "supposedly safer haven" of Facebook, to the "white flight" from American cities; the perception of Myspace eventually drove advertisers away as well. In addition, Myspace had particular problems with vandalism, phishing, malware and spam which it failed to curtail, making the site seem inhospitable.
These have been cited as factors why users, who as teenagers were Myspace's strongest audience in 2006 and 2007, had been migrating to Facebook. Facebook, which started strong with the 18-to-24 group (mostly college students), has been much more successful than Myspace at attracting older users. Like MySpace, Bebo was also unable to compete effectively with Facebook; its valuation plunged from $850 million to just $10 million between 2008 and 2010.
Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch was said to be frustrated that Myspace never met expectations, as a distribution outlet for Fox studio content, and missing the US$1 billion mark in total revenues. That resulted in DeWolfe and Anderson gradually losing their status within Murdoch's inner circle of executives, plus DeWolfe's mentor Peter Chernin, the President and COO of News Corp. who was based in Los Angeles, departed the company. Former AOL executive Jonathan Miller, who joined News Corp in charge of the digital media business, was in the job for three weeks when he shuffled Myspace's executive team in April 2009. Myspace President Tom Anderson stepped down while Chris DeWolfe was replaced as Myspace CEO by former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta. A News Corp. meeting in March 2009 over the direction of Myspace was reportedly the catalyst for that management shakeup, with the Google search deal about to expire, the departure of key personnel (Myspace's COO, SVP of engineering, and SVP of strategy) to form a startup. Furthermore, the opening of extravagant new offices around the world was questioned, as rival Facebook did not have similarly expensive expansion plans yet it still attracted international users at a rapid rate. The changes to Myspace's executive ranks was followed in June 2009 by a layoff of 37.5% of its workforce (including 30 percent of its U.S. employees), reducing employees from 1,600 to 1,000.
In 2009, around the time that Myspace underwent layoffs and a management shakeup, the site "relied on drastic redesigns as Hail Mary passes to get users back". However this may have backfired for Myspace, as it is noted that users generally disliked interface tweaks on rival Facebook (which avoided major site redesigns).
Myspace has attempted to redefine itself as a social entertainment website, with more of a focus on music, movies, celebrities, and TV, instead of a social networking website. Myspace also developed a linkup with Facebook that would allow musicians and bands to manage their Facebook profiles. CEO Mike Jones was quoted as saying that Myspace now is a "complementary offer" to Facebook Inc., which is "not a rival anymore".
In March 2011, market research figures released by comScore suggested that Myspace had lost 10 million users between January and February 2011, and that it had fallen from 95 million to 63 million unique users during the previous twelve months.[64] Myspace registered its sharpest audience declines in the month of February 2011, as traffic fell 44% from a year earlier to 37.7 million unique U.S. visitors. Advertisers have been reported as unwilling to commit to long term deals with the site.
In late February 2011, News Corp officially put the site up for sale, which was estimated to be worth $50–200 million.[66] Losses from last quarter of 2010 were $156 million, over double of the previous year, which dragged down the otherwise strong results of parent News Corp. The deadline for bids, May 31, 2011, passed without any above the reserve price of $100 million being submitted. It has been said that the rapid deterioration in Myspace's business during the most recent quarter deterred many potential suitors.
On June 29, 2011, Myspace announced to label partners and press via email that it had been acquired by Specific Media for an undisclosed sum. CNN reported that Myspace sold for $35 million, and noted that it was "far less than the $580 million News Corp. paid for Myspace in 2005".[71] Rupert Murdoch went on to call the Myspace purchase a "huge mistake". Time Magazine compared News Corporation's purchase of Myspace to Time Warner's purchase of AOL – a conglomerate trying to stay ahead of the competition. Many former executives have gone onto further success after departing Myspace.
On September 24, 2012, Timberlake tweeted a link to a video that featured a redesigned Myspace, dubbed the "new Myspace". Timberlake stated in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter that he believed he was "bridging the gap" between artists and their fan bases.
On January 15, 2013, the new Myspace entered its publicly accessible open beta phase, featuring written editorial content, radio stations, music mixes and videos. Music was streamed through a constant music player located at the bottom of the page, while musicians could track the location of their top fans, who were identified by the number of times they played the artist's music. Although the unveiling was purposefully scheduled on the same date as the release of Timberlake's new music single, the event was overshadowed by Facebook's announcement of its "graph search" function on the same day in California, U.S.
Christian Parkes, vice-president of global marketing, explained in a May 2013 interview that the redesign was undertaken with brands in mind:
The site is going through this custom process of evolution ... When you think of shifting perception, it just comes down to trying to do everything right: Do everything right by the artist, by the brands that we work with, and make the right partnerships.
Writing for his company blog, digital marketing author Rohit Bhargava identified "5 Things For Marketers To Love About The New Myspace" in a post that was published shortly after the commencement of the open beta phase on January 7. Bhargava was impressed by the redesigned platform in terms of marketing and wrote: "the new Myspace may be more important for brand marketers in 2013 than you think." His list included the horizontal navigation of the new website and the engagement potential for brands. The Guardian's Amanda Holpuch was less enthusiastic and concluded "clever design and useful functionalities do not a successful social network make."
The official launch of the new Myspace occurred on June 12, 2013, and included the launch of a corresponding mobile app for the new Myspace, providing users access to streaming radio stations curated by artists and Myspace, as well as personal radio stations created by users themselves. The app's social features facilitate connections between users who possess similar interests, and users can also create animated GIF files, which can be shared on Myspace and other social platforms. The app was launched on Apple Inc.'s App Store, while a mobile website was also designed for those users without access to an iOS device. The newly designed platform also included new analytics tools for artists to manage their digital presence from a single location, and, at the time of the launch, the Myspace music catalog consisted of over 50 million songs.
As part of the discontinuation of the "Classic MySpace" and the launch of the new platform, the user content from the old MySpace was deleted. Myspace explained on its website that it would no longer feature "Blogs, Private Messages, Videos, Comments or Posts, Custom background design and Games," acknowledging that "this is upsetting to some." Myspace received a large amount of online complaints from users and eventually locked the primary discussion thread. The complaints described the loss of poems and personal notes, photos of dead friends, intimate messages, and games that cost significant amounts of time and money. . . ."
