Dub dot dash

Danah at NZMIC
Danah Boyd gave a talk to interested music folks at the NZ Music Industry Commission's offices, Monday night. Here's some random notes from it. Enjoy.

Myspace's initial growth came from band promoters in LA - myspace founder Tom was closely aligned wth them. The promoters set it up so that if you wanted to get into their shows, and their VIP areas, you had to be on Myspace. They'd announce shows there exclusively.

Bands need to have your band name on the home page, not just in the webpage address - to help Google's search function.

Keep it live, keep it interactive - ie put up an early version of a song/or/ a live cut of a song, then send out a bulletin - "check out this tune". Or put up a list of "what i'm listening to now"

Put up video, not just music vids, but random stuff - Myspace pays for bandwidth.

Personalise pages with photos, not just cover art.

For bands, they can use Myspace to send out bulletins, as a way to keep their fans informed on upcoming gigs etc. She suggests using hacks to utilise the site.

Not just about attracting a huge number of friends - there are automated programmes that do that - Bands are now wanting comments rather than a huge number of friends - comments that include a fan's location.

Pre-release your music/video via Myspace - adopted by fans and spread thru their friends.

Myspace has 2 terabytes of data uploaded daily.

Danah noted that Bebo.com is more popular here than Myspace.

Danah says Murdoch has added lawyers and lobbyists to Myspace, but has largely left it alone.

Curently, Myspace is focussing its resources on dealing with the moral panic - two thirds of the staff are searching out porn on Myspace and eliminating it. Danah says they need to be focussing on music, which is their strength.

Myspace has no quality assurance - they expect their users to do it. They throw up 3 or 4 new featrures a day and see if they work.

She thinks next big thing will be mobile, which means it wont be in the States. Phones as multimedia devices. In the US, Kids over 18, with a credit card can get a mobile phone.Under 18, your mobile has to be linked to your parents phone account.

Notes that the Sidekick does IM (instant messaging) via AOL - There are 4 times more downloads to Sidekicks than any other phone. About 500,000 in use in US and Germany.

She asked Myspace the % of females on the site - they can't even do the data for that. They are not running much in the way of statistics at all.


One point that didn't get touched on in the Myspace talkfests - a lot of unsigned NZ bands are using Myspace to create a web presence. Rather than spend mega-dollars on creating and hosting their own site, they use Myspace, to host music, photos, video, etc. they can customise it, make it their own, and it's free.

Oh, and Robyn notes that "interested parties can out examine photographic evidence of the Great Blend." And here's Robyn...

and speaking of photographic evidence, Me and James Littlewood (occasional PA contributor) grinning... maybe it was the free coffee, or our cheery dispositions, who knows...



and Matt and me...





From Matt's blog on the PA Great Blend... snip...

Myspace of course was built to run friendster into the ground. Whereas friendster still placed its emphasis on dating and such, Myspace blew it open. Not only the combining of blogging, dating/networking, music, pics etc. into a utility site, but the fact that the HTML coding left it wide open for a flood of teenagers to do what they liked with their pages, and basically recreate their identity online. And basically what is being a teenager? Its appropriating and projecting an identity of an idealised self. Hey, I do it all the time. Ill take a compounded reality with a side of fries, thanks. On the panel, I also raised discussion about sub cultural movements finding a foothold on myspace (Uh huh, yes, emo) like Danah said, its all about gLOCALisation (yeah drop that one next time youre having one of your wanky debates on campus)

But yeah, thrilling enough as it was to be regarded as a myspace expert, next thing Im getting thronged hard by academics, media and tech heads and my consultancy service as youth market internet analyst is in great demand! Watch for me rolling up in my Porsche blinging high as a kite on powdered tiger penis any day now!!!

Even Danah herself wants to interview me for her research but she was in the same boat as me, she wanted to catch Timmy the Schu man laying down beats, while I didnt want to miss Emma Green @ Fu because her myspace says shes single and I think Ive got a crush on her..."