New YouTube Features Push Farther into MySpace Territory
YouTube now enables users who consider themselves musicians to sign up as a musician: http://youtube.com/signup?signup_type=m

I'm not yet sure what that entails in regards to how they appear in the network, or whether, like MySpace, YouTube will enable musicians to upload their own music.

YouTube Charging Farther into MySpace Turf
I see this as YouTube charging farther into MySpace territory, which they already started by enabling video uploaders and video viewers to create profile pages.

MySpace grew, according to my anecdotal understanding, in large part because the LA music scene adopted it (and because it had blogs before friendster...) and has remained a crucial platform for local musicians everywhere to stay in touch with their audiences. As evidenced by the invite spam I get from musicians every day.

Local music is, well, local, and is a strong social glue in MySpace.

MySpace recently launched a video upload service, but it's not as well integrated into profile pages.

If YouTube got wise and put an actual written blog function onto profile pages, and enabled users to rate each other as WELL as each others' videos I think they'd have a stronger MySpace contender.

YouTube suggestion + business model idea:
Also, please please please YouTube enable me to make a continuous video play list - so that I can preload 20 or 30 videos and watch them straight through without having to click play every 30 seconds.

You could throw little ads in after every 5 minutes or so too :)

(Check out Fawkes 5 alternatives to MySpace post for others muscling into the social networking turf.)

Profile Page Changes
YouTube has also made changes to the profile pages, which you have to be logged in to see:

There's an "active channels" section on the far-right nav, which shows me 4 randomly refreshed channel profiles of other users (these should be recommended channels based on my viewing history and the videos in *MY channel* but that's a job for Greg Linden...)

This will encourage more video exploring - which is currently YouTube's strength when it comes to video navigation.

The "active groups" section, also on the far right nav, has 2 suggested groups, which are user organizations based around topics such as the lonely island.

Overall it's cleaner, and, as the little announcement says, "Your shared videos, messages and friend requests have now all been consolidated into one handy dandy new Inbox."

MySpace Updates
MySpace added a sketch comedy section, which could come to rival to some extent Channel 101, plus the other sketch comedy video sites popping up in Channel 101's wake.

MySpace Books section enables users to find good books and will get them come Amazon affiliate cash. Plus authors are using it for marketing themselves too...

MySpace IM - which you probably already heard of.

And MySpace Movies, which I wrote about in MySpace 2.0: an Entertainment Collaboration/Distribution Network

Why is Social Networking Covered in a Search Blog?
At its core, search is a means of navigating vast tracts of information. Social networks such as MySpace and YouTube provide a more social method for navigating information (as of course do PreFound, Eurekster, Yahoo and Google).

We've already started our research into Social Network Optimization and Market Conversation Optimization - we just want to make sure you're in the loop ;)

If you're a small, local business looking for the social networking edge you should look at Merchant Circle in addition to MySpace.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |