Facebook, as predicted, has surpassed MySpace in terms of active users and visitors. Here’s the score for February 2009, according to  Nielsen Ratings:

Facebook: 65 million unique visitors, quickly rising
MySpace: 54 million unique visitors, on a slow decrease

With numbers as scary as these, MySpace is making some big changes to try and improve their share of the lost market. The biggest one, they’re getting rid of founder and Chief Executive, Chris DeWolfe and replacing with former AOL Chief Executive, Jon Miller. With Chris’ leave, MySpace’s big star, Tom, might soon be leaving as well, voluntarily. With these changes, MySpace is most likely to take shape as more of an entertainment provider and less of a social network.

Jon Miller had a huge history of turning things around for AOL by letting non subscribers use AOL’s content, something that seemed forbidden in their previous business model. As more visitors came through, AOL standardized their internet advertising model and showed a great return on the drastic changes. Unfortunately, that return was too late for Jon Miller as he was fired from AOL, essentially before the numbers were in.

Considering his strategies and history, Miller will most likely be making those drastic and needed changes to MySpace as well. News Corp wants to see some new strategies for the MySpace monster since its $300 million advertising deal with Google is up soon, leaving MySpace grasping for advertisers. One of their biggest issues from the start was not allowing the little companies to come in and advertise, as Facebook realized was an increasing trend (with Google Adwords) and took advantage of by creating a similar system to well known Adwords system, even allowing you to track page views and other statistical information, as with Google Analytics.

What exactly will happen? It’s hard to say 100%, but without advertisers dropping $30,000 for a handful of ads at a $5.00 CPM, MySpace will probably be getting more into the smaller advertisers, similar to how Facebook and Google work and concentrating on the ability to target ads better throughout the network. The problem is getting users who have left MySpace to come back and they certainly won’t do it for friends or social networking, users who have left are using Facebook for that. The only solution to increase their share is to become an online entertainment provider, similar to YouTube, to drive new traffic back to the site in hopes of something more than just networking. How Miller will actually do that will be interesting. Exclusive videos, artists, and shows work to some degree, but wouldn’t come close to being the fresh strategy that MySpace needs to turn themselves around. Free content seemed to be the theme with Miller as he worked on turning AOL around, but MySpace has all the content you need. Recently, MySpace picked up on an increasing trend – users listening to music on YouTube, using it as radio like Pandora, just without any interupting ads. With MySpace’s huge share of music and independent and signed artists alike, they have a great change of making something out of it; only time will tell, though.

So what does all of it mean to marketers and bands? Well, basic strategies won’t change much, but ultimately, know that the internet is moving more and more towards interactive and engaging media. If you can post a video instead of a picture, do it! If you’re not on Facebook yet, join! And most importantly, pick an overall theme for your brand. People need some type of call to action to tell them what to do, otherwise they get lost. Such might have been the case with MySpace, it was a social network with its own music section, then videos, classifieds, schools, calendars, politics, celebrities, causes, and the list goes on. It became so many things that perhaps people lost sight of what they’re actually supposed to do on the network. It is possible for websites to be too overwhelming, and if any site wins in that category, it’s MySpace. People need objectives, even in entertainment.

This is easier for bands, usually, but businesses have to get creative with this one. A typical objective is to buy my product, but visitors don’t want to hear your sales pitch. To work around this, sites use free content as bait and subtly try to talk visitors into purchasing something. A better strategy is to somehow position your product so it becomes the entertainment. Ultimately, that puts a lot of the marketing efforts into your product development – why is your product/service different and why will people care to talk about it. If you can positively answer those questions, then you’ll no longer have to pitch your product/service online, but instead just feature it and get it out there!