MySpace CEO Jabs Back at Yahoo's Bartz

We heard that some MySpace insiders weren’t exactly pleased when new Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz made a subtle jab at MySpace (NWS) during the Yahoo earnings call earlier this week.

When asked if Yahoo would start to focus on the younger demographic, Bartz responded “So one thing I would say, I want to make sure that we serve the demographic that we have now very, very well. Also what I would tell you, the good news is, that crowd is very finicky. And just as MySpace was extremely hot and then moved over to Facebook, who knows what’s going to come next and who knows whether Yahoo can grab that property and be successful.”

The press took that quote and ran with it, writing headlines like this one from Reuters: Facebook hotter than MySpace: Yahoo CEO Bartz.

Bartz may have singled out MySpace because of a Financial Times article noting that the company was successfully targeting Yahoo’s advertisers.

I caught MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe in the hallway at the World Economic Forum at Davos earlier today. I have a much longer interview that I’ll post tomorrow. But I also asked him what he thought of being called out by Bartz. His response is in the video above. He was polite, but threw in a couple of zingers, saying Bartz, who is new to the consumer Internet space and is still learning, and “she’s not from this industry and it will probably take some time to get acclimated.” He also says he doubts Bartz has ever been on the MySpace website. Full transcript of the brief exchange is below.

Michael Arrington: I’m here with MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe. Chris, sorry to grab you in the hallway, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. A couple of days ago the new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz on an earnings call said something we found kind of funny. She said something along the lines of “Facebook is hot, MySpace isn’t, or MySpace is dead“ or something along those lines. I found that interesting given that you guys have a pretty awesome revenue trajectory and also you guys are partners on OpenSocial and some other stuff. What was your reaction to that?

Chris DeWolfe: I didn’t have a big reaction to that. I think she is fairly new to the consumer internet space and is probably still learning. I hear she’s a really smart person and she’ll do a good job there. I doubt she’s been on our site and if you look at our numbers in the United States, we have 76 million unique users and our nearest competitor has 45 million unique users. So, it’s kind of an odd statement but again, she’s not from this industry and it will probably take some time to get acclimated.

Michael Arrington: All right, thanks very much.

Original post

Comments

[Guero:]

C'mon, two tech CEO's are butting heads and we end up with no gratuitous usage of tech buzzwords to show for it. What, no mention of "scaling up" or "mindshare" or "sync-ability" or some other hogwash?

Jan 30 05:15 PM

[User 348072:]

So, your own article shows that were misquoting when you asked Chris this question. Perhaps you should change the title of this article to "CEO Bar Fight!!!"? It would be as accurate I think.

Jan 30 05:31 PM

[Lightway:]

You forgot the mention the Cloud too. Any tech article is now required to mention the cloud. Before that it was "Web 2.0."


On Jan 30 05:15 PM Guero wrote:

> C'mon, two tech CEO's are butting heads and we end up with no gratuitous
> usage of tech buzzwords to show for it. What, no mention of "scaling
> up" or "mindshare" or "sync-ability" or some other hogwash?

Jan 30 08:54 PM

[Ian Hendry:]

Bartz's perception is most people's perception. When people mistakenly think an actor is dead, he invariably ends up getting no work. The myth becomes the reality. I don't hear any talk of MySpace these days.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
www.wecando.biz

Jan 31 06:38 AM

[investorinPA:]

I have to agree..I use both Myspace and Facebook. My personal usage of Myspace has tailed off completely. I will log on 1x a day at most. Facebook, I will keep on for a while and more and more of my friends are on there. The BIG advantage FB did was to put an Instant Messenger right in their platform. FB has everything on one page. Additionally, they have much easier applications to update your status over a cell phone. Finally, the winning formula they emulated was to convince people who have yahoo, aim, msn to just use their IM and webpage and thus avoid incompatibility issues entirely.

I don't think Myspace is dead...yet. They have strengths in that they are preferred by celebs, musicians, entertainers, and teens (who like to change their layouts, add music, etc). They need to increase their strong factors and deemphasize the total number of users. A smaller but more loyal Myspace can be very profitable. But Facebook is going to win the total users/time spent online war. Myspace should see the inevitable and focus on what they CAN win out on.


On Jan 31 06:38 AM Ian Hendry wrote:

> Bartz's perception is most people's perception. When people mistakenly
> think an actor is dead, he invariably ends up getting no work. The
> myth becomes the reality. I don't hear any talk of MySpace these
> days.
>
> Ian Hendry
> CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
> www.wecando.biz
>

Jan 31 09:45 AM

[James Wilson:]

Yahoo is the homepage for people going to my space he should not make Yahoo xcutives angery.

Jan 31 04:47 PM

[Will Ray, Jr.:]

LOL.... they might both has beens, what are they thinking! They all have some marketshare but I don't think they really know what business they are in. Nice people running these companies, but this is not about being nice so that doesn't really matter. I did wonder how hard it would be for anyone to learn Yahoo's Business who was not an Internet insider. I don't understand why these companies try tricks instead of innovate with technology. I don't speak for Apple, but damn they out innovated my definition of innovation. I think they have the best Business Model on the planet. The best products help a lot too! I own the stock at $14 on full disclosure.

Jul 30 01:28 AM

[Will Ray, Jr.:]

LOL.... they might both be has beens, what are they thinking! They all have some marketshare but I don't think they really know what business they are in. Nice people running these companies, but this is not about being nice so that doesn't really matter. I did wonder how hard it would be for anyone to learn Yahoo's Business who was not an Internet insider. I don't understand why these companies try tricks instead of innovate with technology. I don't speak for Apple, but damn they out innovated my definition of innovation. I think they have the best Business Model on the planet. The best products help a lot too! I own the stock at $14 on full disclosure.

Jul 30 01:29 AM