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Rupert Murdoch: Facebook is Just a Directory
Rupert Murdoch, the 78-year-old CEO and chairman of News Corp., just gave a revealing interview to The Street’s Dan Freed. In this interview, Murdoch argues that the latest headcount reduction at MySpace was necessary because the number of employees at the company had grown out of control. In addition, he also told Freed that he wants the site to be very different from Facebook, which, in his eyes, is nothing more than a directory, while MySpace is a place “to find common interests, share music, that sort of thing.”
Facebook: Just a Directory
With regards to Facebook, we can’t help but think that Murdoch must be willfully oblivious to the fact that the service’s users are abandoning the company in favor of Facebook. Just a simple look at the current traffic stats for both services tells a very clear story about the abysmal state MySpace is finding itself in today. While Facebook is growing rapidly, MySpace’s traffic is, at best, staying flat. And to think of Facebook as nothing more than a directory just ignores the reality of how users are using the site and what Facebook’s management team envisions the service to be.
Micropayments: Not a Solution
We have to agree with Murdoch, though, that micropayments are probably not a viable solution for monetizing news content on the web – though we would argue that some people have managed to make a living off the Internet from doing other things than just monetizing search.
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