News Corp sees MySpace as a place for games

MYSPACE, which has been losing traffic to Facebook, may be turned into a gaming platform to improve its entertainment offerings.

Jonathan Miller, digital head of MySpace's parent company News Corp, said he wants to expand the videogame platform on his company's sagging social networking site, which lags behind Facebook in number of users.

"MySpace is and will be more in the future a gaming platform, a space for people to meet and play games," Mr Miller said at the Fortune Brainstorm: TECH conference in Pasadena, California.

Mr Miller said he saw opportunities to let videogame suppliers launch titles on MySpace and observe user data to better develop games.

The numbers game

Analysts have been doubtful on MySpace's entertainment drive, given that Google's YouTube dominates the user-generated video content space, while professional video is led by Hulu.

That leaves gaming. A focus on videogames could help MySpace revitalize itself and better compete against Facebook, which recently surpassed 200 million active users and has vaulted ahead of MySpace.

Facebook had more than 307 million unique visitors in April, while MySpace had less than 125 million, according to comScore.

Last month, Facebook surpassed Myspace's peak number of unique monthly users in the US, 76.3 million, set in October 2008, according to the research house.

MySpace already has a portal where users can play videogames with friends online. Facebook hosts a number of casual games, from Scrabble to chess.

Opportunity knocks

But Miller described videogames as an opportunity for expansion not only for MySpace, but for owner News Corp, which has the Fox network and movie studio and other media companies.

"None of the traditional media conglomerates are also significant video game players, so to speak, and I think that that's the missing piece of the equation, particularly when you see how much time is spent playing games online," he said.

News Corp bought MySpace in 2005 for $US580 million ($710 million) when the social networking website was highly popular, especially among younger web users.

But with MySpace losing ground to Facebook and Twitter, News Corp recently ousted MySpace co-founder and boss Chris DeWolfe and installed its own management team.

In a cost-cutting move, MySpace laid off more than 400 workers, or 30 percent of its staff, in the US.

At the conference, Mr Miller was asked during an on-stage session to talk about News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch's recent assessment that MySpace should become an "entertainment portal".

"You must focus, and in our case we are focusing on music, games, video, things like that," Mr Miller said.

"If you look at the big activities online, games right now is number three," he said.

"Communications, search, games. So it's clearly going to be a major focus."

He added that News Corp could possibly make acquisitions to bolster MySpace's video game platform, though he had no specific targets in mind.

Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Research, said in a report MySpace could use gaming to reestablish itself, but that "acquisitions would likely be needed to move the needle".

News Corp is the parent company of the publisher of News.com.au