SAN FRANCISCO--With both MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta and News Corp. chief digital officer Jonathan Miller taking the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit this week, there was naturally plenty of talk about the social site's attempt to reverse its ill fortune of late. Once the biggest name in social networking, it's long since lost that title to Facebook and is trying to reinvent itself as a destination for music and entertainment.
"I think that what you see in the space more than anything else is if you don't keep innovating and moving forward you get in trouble," Miller said in his talk on Thursday morning. "You can't stop, you have to keep going, and (MySpace) didn't keep going, it kind of stopped."
And in that time, he added, "we had two fantastic competitors emerge in Facebook and Twitter."
The previous day, Van Natta made his first big appearance on the conference circuit since he joined MySpace and was tasked with a major turnaround. Van Natta unveiled a new music video hub as well as an enhanced set of marketing tools for music artists--some of which were built in with technology from iLike, which MySpace acquired this summer.
And on Wednesday night, the "new" MySpace was out in full form: a line snaked down three city blocks when music fans caught wind of the fact that the company had booked rock band Weezer for one of its "secret shows" concerts.
"MySpace started with an essence around certain things, and one of them was music, and meeting new people," Miller, a former AOL exec who also joined News Corp. this spring, said on Thursday. "We're going back to basics in that sense, but you've got to make it relevant to today and going forward."
It's obviously too early to tell whether the "reinvention" will work. Some critics say that it's too big of a task, especially given the state of the advertising market. But Miller spent a big portion of his talk at the Web 2.0 Summit hyping up the Fox Audience Network, or FAN, the digital advertising division that News Corp. first announced last spring.
"We kind of broke it out of MySpace and gave it a life of its own," Miller said. "We're just at the beginning of a coming-out party for FAN."
FAN just inked a deal with agency giant Omnicom, and more are on the way, he added. Miller also said FAN is the fifth-largest ad network on the Web, after the usual suspects--Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL--and that it's hoping to get into fourth place soon.
News Corp. digital chief Jonathan Miller talks MySpace with Fortune's Jessi Hempel.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)PASADENA, Calif.--News Corp. digital chief Jonathan Miller said Thursday that MySpace needs a culture shift that focuses on spotting changes in consumer behavior and adapting more quickly.
"One of the things about this medium is you have to continually develop product," Miller said, speaking at the Brainstorm: Tech conference here. "You can't just put something on the shelf."
For MySpace, that means focusing on doing a few things well. Asked about Rupert Murdoch's recent comments that MySpace should focus on entertainment, Miller said: "When you get involved in companies that need to regain their way, the key thing you have to find out is who are you really."
Entertainment is a big piece of who MySpace is, Miller said. "MySpace has, since its inception, has had meaningful impact in how culture and pop culture (specifically) has been defined."
Although MySpace has fallen behind, he said that the key is becoming quicker at spotting the trends just now emerging, rather than catching up in all the areas it has missed.
"You can't play catch-up or at least you can't do it very much," he said. To spot new trends, he said that the company needs small groups specialized on specific tasks, as opposed to a large, matrix-based organization.
On the publishing side of the business, Miller said News Corp. and indeed lots of the leaders in print and book publishing will start getting much more aggressive this fall.
"The business models have to be creative," Miller said. "You have to leverage the assets you have while they are still vibrant."
News Corp. is about to hire former AOL Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Miller to head up the media conglomerate's digital initiatives, replacing Peter Levinsohn, according several news reports, including two on News Corp.-owned publications.
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AOL)
Miller's new job would oversee all online operations including the popular MySpace social-networking site as well as the company's investment in the also popular Hulu video site, according to a report late Friday on The Wall Street Journal.
In her Boomtown blog on the All Thing Digital Web site, Kara Swisher further explained Friday night that Miller is still bound by a non-compete agreement with Time Warner, which runs out in just a few days. She cited unnamed sources familiar with the situation saying a formal announcement could come Monday or Tuesday, at the latest.
Levinsohn will move to another job within News Corp. at the film and television studios, according to both news accounts.
The news was first reported on the Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily blog, as pointed out by Swisher. It was also substantiated by Ross Levinsohn, Miller's business partner, on his own blog, which was also noted by Swisher.
Miller made headlines last year when Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes objected to his appointment to Yahoo's board of directors.
Yahoo's stock rose 8 percent to $11.64 Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal reported former AOL Chief Executive Jonathan Miller is trying to raise money to acquire all or a part of the Internet pioneer.
Miller believes he can do a deal worth about $20 to $22 per share, according to the report, which cited unnamed sources. Those sources said Miller is trying to raise money from private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds.
A Times of London report over the weekend also said Miller was working on a deal, but that report limited the scope to Yahoo's search business and said the ultimate owner of the assets would be Microsoft. The Wall Street Journal report didn't uncover a Microsoft connection.
Miller runs a venture capital fund called Velocity Interactive Group.
Yahoo and Velocity Interactive didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
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