Ben-Rowe.com

Read write web on Myspace’s decision to focus on Music:

The question that remains, of course, is whether or not MySpace’s re-branding efforts will be enough to keep the site from going under. Although MySpace still had a healthy 64 million users in August of this year, that number is 12 million fewer than it did at the same time last year. Meanwhile, Facebook climbed to 300 million worldwide that same month.

Can MySpace entice people to come back to the network through its new music-based initiatives? It’s too soon to tell at the moment whether the strategy will work or not, but it’s definitely the network’s best shot. By capitalizing on what remains the most popular activity on MySpace to date (music and video), the company hopes to become more of a niche site for socializing around music instead of a site for just socializing. The newly launched features are just a part of the company’s overall efforts in this direction, too. Still to come are concert ticket and merchandise sales, although no details or launch dates have been given for those features as of yet.

While these efforts may not ever allow MySpace to reclaim its status as the number one social network – that ship seems to have sailed – they could definitely help the network maintain profitability. And at the end of the day, that’s all that’s really needed. It’s not about how many users you have, it’s about how much money you can make off of those that you do.

I think it’s great that they’ve decided to go stong into their niche. I always argue that Myspace isn’t a dead-zone if you’re a musician.

As social networks become mainstream, we’ll continue to see social network niches. I think it will be rare in, say, 3 years that there’ll be a one-stop shop for social networks. People will visit a hand-ful of social hubs, be they twitter or flickr or etsy or youtube.

It makes total sense that they choose to focus on their strength here. And I imagine has the potential to be a far smaller, but profitable niche player.

And, let’s face it – it’s either that or down the plug-hole.