MarthaSpace will Flop if It Fails to Bridge

Martha Stewart Living Omimedia (MSLO) is planning to launch its own version of MySpace late next year. The plan, according to CEO Susan Lynne, is to create a social net that would appeal to women aged 25 to 45, and allow members to share photographs, scrapbooks, recipes and similar projects with one another and home design experts.

MarthaSpace will only succeed if it builds a bridge to other communities where people are talking about these topics - like Blogher. MSLO needs to help their own in finding each other but they also must reach out to what is probably an equally large number of consumers who are talking about these topics on other properties. In other words, they need a picture-in-picture approach.

Also, I am concerned that the long development cycle could cause issues. By the time the site launches late next year this whole space will have changed. Someone can come along and potentially eat their lunch before they even launch. (Fine print: Edelman represents MySpace but I don't work on the business.)

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