MySpace has launched a new marketing campaign to win back old customers by showing them their old photos still on the site.
MySpace, once a dominant social networking site, is trying to make a comeback among a large chunk of its user-base by sending reminders of embarrassing photos that still exist on the site. The unique marketing strategy is a clever approach to get the attention of its customers. By tagging users' old photos along with a line that reads, "The good, the rad and the what were you thinking..." the social network gives a link to the respective user's profile.
Though it clearly looks like 'blackmailing' to get users to login to their old MySpace accounts, the company insists that it is simply reaching out to its current and past users, a spokesperson told Mashable.
"Myspace has been reaching out to current and past users to re-engage them through a personalized experience," the company spokesperson said.
According to the report, MySpace has 15 billion photos of users stored in its database. But the massive database is just a scratch compared to Facebook, which announced in September that it had 250 billion photos.
Due to the growing popularity of Facebook, MySpace lost its audience on the network. In 2011, the site was bought by Justin Timberlake and Specific Media for $35 million and re-launched with focus on music. The overhauled MySpace lets musicians upload songs and videos, which the fans on the site can watch, listen and repost on their profiles. The music-focused redesign worked in favor of the dying social network, which boasted a library of 2 million music videos and 52 million songs soon after its re-launch, Washington Post reports.
It is still not clear if the marketing gimmick is working for the social network. But if MySpace is relying on a few high-school photos that users once had on the site, the competition around it is too vast now to overcome. As of now the site remains popular among music fans, but alternate choices such as Spotify and Pandora offer great music too and Twitter and Facebook give greater opportunities to follow artists.
But as ABC News points out, the new tactic sure serves as a reminder to people to be cautious about what they post online.
