MySpace plays catch up to Facebook, plans to woo film makers

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MySpace, owned by media bigwig News Corp, is looking towards inking deals with movie makers to gain the ground it lost to rival social networking website, Facebook.

Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace, expressed his plans to feature artists’ projects on his website in a media interview at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival. The deals would work with MySpace acting as a platform where companies can sponsor a filmmaker’s projects - effectively translating it into advertising options for sponsors, publicity for filmmakers and a unique new service which would potentially bring more users to the site. The plan is consistent with the findings of a company-commissioned research by Nielsen Co which showed MySpace users seeking movie information at the site.

The website, which started selling music as well, lost out to Facebook in terms of users last year. With almost a 100 million users less than Facebook’s 221.8 million, MySpace witnessed a growth of just 17% as compared to the 200% growth of its primary competitor by the end of the year 2008, according to a study by ComScore Inc.

Both websites are stressing on multimedia integration to keep their users from migrating to other websites. As the average bandwidth available to users increases every year, all major social networking websites are witnessing increased user preferences for music and movies. From listening to streaming audio to catching trailers and behind the scenes videos, users now have the ability to share their interests beyond written texts.

Facebook seems to have scored one over MySpace of late, though. In the recently held presidential inauguration, it tied up with CNN.com to provide live feed of the events as they took place in Washington and gave users the facility to watch it while chatting with their friends on the same screen.