So NewsCorp invested in SimplyHired... and the talk is that MySpace will now get jobs content.
Obviously, since USV is invested in Indeed, it was important news.
At first, I thought it was a big win for them, but as I think about it, it may very well be the moment that MySpace jumped the shark.
MySpace is comprised of two things... user generated content and entertainment. That's it. That's been the secret to its success.
But jobs? How are MySpacers going to react when jobs start showing up? I mean, I have a feeling that they'll probably just ignore it, because for most people, MySpace is self expression and a way to meet new people or discover new music. It will be fascinating to see how job content gets integrated here.
I think MySpace could be a huge moneymaker for NewsCorp... the habits of this audience should be valuable enough to mine by "facilitation" alone, without "addition." In other words, give the crowd enough ways to express themselves and that becomes a lot of valuable metadata.
Frankly, I think the Facebook would have made so much more sense. College students use the Facebook as their personal PIM... the online connection to their college life that colleges themselves could never create. Job content, particularly internships, would fit very seemlessly here and probably get a lot more traffic than the average career planning office's website. (A vertical job search would probably be a lot more useful, too.) The web offerings of most career planning office's websites are so poor and so behind the times, that by adding a vertical job search to the Facebook, particularly one neatly tied in with cool social features (tagging jobs for friends, broadcasting them to the Finance club, etc...), they'd be doing a huge service to the students.
Plus, regardless of which site gets more traffic, the Facebook is a better target audience for job seekers, because MySpace has a lot of high school students.
The other interesting thing about the Facebook is how it eventually deals with alumni. At some point, Facebookees are going to leave school and the Facebook is going to be their connection to other alumni. That means that, if I were InCircle, I'd be looking over my shoulder. It wouldn't take much, if anything, for Facebook to be the first stop for alumni in terms of social networking, and that's InCircle's business model. Jobs makes a lot of sense for alumni... and integrating social features means Facebook moves close to LinkedIn's model as well. Imagine going on the Facebook to checkout a job, then being able to see how many of your school's alumni work at that company and how you're connect to them. I think that would be useful for students as well, once a critical mass of alumni are on board. Sure, it doesn't seem like "fun" content... but there are thinks really useful to students that aren't always fun.
Besides... getting paid to work at a great job is fun...trust me.
But back to MySpace, either way, its a facinating deal and it will be an even more interesting integration.