MySpace's Timberlake 'exclusive'

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 02 July 2011 15:25

Your IT - Entertainment

With half of MySpace's staff getting the sack following the buyout by Specific Media, will Justin Timberlake's upcoming 'MySpace exclusive' score a home run with end-users, or fail to get past first base?

Justin Timberlake, one of the investors in Specific Media's purchase of MySpace, is being seen as one of the keys to restoring MySpace's place in the upper echelons of the social world of networking.

As reported by CNET in the US, part of Specific Media's statement noted that: 'As part of the deal, Emmy and Grammy winning artist Justin Timberlake will also take an ownership stake and play a major role in developing the creative direction and strategy for the company moving forward. Specific Media and Timberlake plan to unveil their vision for the site in an exclusive press conference later this summer."

Given that Timberlake is now an investor in MySpace, it's funny to read that Timberlake's press conference with Specific Media will be 'exclusive'.

Why, did someone think that the press conference would be simultaneously broadcast on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News all at the same time?

Of course, there will be massive publicity of whatever it is Specific Media and Timberlake will announce across multiple mediums, from the world of entertainment through to the world of tech and simply the general news.

But with MySpace already having tried virtually every online entertainment trick in the book to restore its fortunes, one can only hope that the forthcoming vision will be no less than 20/20, lest 'myspace' become further entrenched as a synonym for 'money pit'.

All we really know thus far is that Specific Media's CEO, Tim Vanderhook, is reporting by the Wall Street Journal as stating that he's building a 'digital media company on par with Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, and all the other big names out there'.

Perhaps Yahoo and AOL aren't exactly the kinds of companies that Mr Vanderhook should be wishing to emulate, however, given their waning Internet power.

Indeed, one would have thought that MySpace had already reached the heights of the Yahoos and AOLs of the world, and that doing so had done them little good.

So, we're now left waiting for a Justin Timberlake 'exclusive' to win the day, to make pay day and to make MySpace pay.

However, therein lies the biggest question of all.

Can Mr Sexyback bring the sexy back to MySpace?