MySpace Becoming a Gaming Platform

MySpace has seen its active membership shrink considerably over the past year to Facebook. In lieu of fighting a losing battle with Facebook over being a social networking platform, Reuters is reporting that MySpace is looking to reposition itself as a online video gaming platform.

News Corp digital head Jonathan Miller said that he sees opportunities to lure in gaming suppliers so that they can launch their products on MySpace and take advantage of user data in crafting games.

"MySpace is and will be more in the future a gaming platform, a space for people to meet and play games," Miller said.

comScore reports that Facebook had over 307 million unique visitors in April 2009, while MySpace had less than 125 million.

Miller sees gaming as an opportunity for MySpace and parent company News Corp as a whole. "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," Miller said.

"If you look at the big activities online, games right now is number three," he added. "Communications, search, games. So it's clearly going to be a major focus."

Trying to rebrand MySpace as a gaming portal isn't a bad idea, but if the user interest isn't there, it'll never get off the ground.