Yesterday, Jon and I spoke with Phil Carpenter, VP of Marketing for
SimplyHired, which is partly owned by MySpace and just launched MySpace
Careers. On the call, Phil answered questions about the site,
integration as part of the Fox Interactive network, evolution of
SimplyHired with MySpace, valuing SimplyHired (but no specific
numbers), competitors he watches closely, and Phil's perspective on the
importance of the blogging community to SimplyHired. Download the podcast by clicking here (MP3, 14.6MB, 16 minutes).
Fox's investment in SimplyHired now starts to make sense with
integration into MySpace. The question now is what is the reasoning
behind the strategy? Of course MySpace could have built the job system
themselves, but consider the cesspool that is MySpace Classifieds.
There are no numbers on exact usage (and Mr. Levinsohn will probably keep it that way), but based on the limited postings
relative to places like craigslist, it seems they have had real trouble
getting users to migrate to use their classifieds, even though it is
free!
That has everything to do with utility. When you have no people selling things, the buyers do not go. When you post something and no buyers go, you don't post anything again. Craigslist has grown organically from Craig's friends to the world. MySpace essentially pushed it upon users. But that's just one explanation. Another is that MySpace users simply are not on the site to sell things and thus will not adopt MySpace's product.
But President of Fox Interactive Media Ross Levinsohn, head of the company that invested in SimplyHired and owns Myspace, has other ideas. Why not build in a product like SimplyHired that is already useful because it crawls a bunch of job sites? That way fickle MySpace users do not become annoyed at the lack of job postings and instead find a rich experience. Positive buzz drives continued uses, then, boom, MySpace starts charging for "featured" job positions. Over time, MySpace could build the clout to draw regular job posts, and ultimately may not need the job feeds from which SimplyHired draws.
That raises two questions: (1) who holds the strings, MySpace or SimplyHired? (2) how do the data feed "partners" of SimplyHired feel about that? The first one is ambiguous given the terms of the deal are unknown. It is possible Mr. Levinsohn is using a few million dollars investment to buy utility for users for now. After proving MySpace users will search for jobs on the site, he could cut out SimplyHired. On the second question, my guess is SimplyHired wants to avoid tipping off their ambitions to data feed partners for fear they could backlash, remove their feeds, reduce the usefulness and kill the whole MySpace experiment before it starts.
My prediction? Well, it remains to be seen if MySpace users will take to semi-serious activities like searching for jobs. Already they have shown little interest in classifieds, but as I explained, that could be due to any myriad of factors.
If the experiment with SimplyHired works, look for MySpace to bring in meta-search
engines for product listings, then build their own marketplace on top of that.
Last
observation: if Mr. Levinsohn keeps partnering, will MySpace become Yahoo circa 1998-today with dozens of categories of service, all powered
by somebody else? Maybe, because partnering reduces risk by increasing
utilty, and if agreements are worded right, they can abandon their partners for their own wares. For SimplyHired's sake, I hope MySpace sticks with them.
What do you think? Will MySpace Careers work? What does Mr. Levinsohn want MySpace to be in a year? Please post your comments.
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