Getting Social with MySpace GM of Social Christina Wodtke

MySpace general manager of social Christina Wodtke participated in a Q&A for the MySpace Blog, during which she discussed her role at the social-networking site. Highlights follow: It's really about managing the entire social ecosystem on the site, including conversation tools like email and commenting, to the viral components such as the stream and share. These activities are so important in making people aware of what their friends are doing, what musicians, filmmakers and other artists are doing, and facilitating interactions between these two constituencies in order to help them reach out to each other. At the same time, you want to keep the intimate feeling social sites are uniquely good at, that you are surrounded by people you care about. There were two big trends (at the Web 2.0 Expo) that grabbed my attention the most. The panel I participated on focused on advertising and the real-time Web, and it quickly became clear that a number of social sites are working toward mapping the "interest graph." In other words, a site can have knowledge of not only who users are connected to, but also what they're interested in. MySpace has always been a site that wasn't just about your friends, but about connecting with them through the sharing of pop-culture content including music and videos, and we've been collecting that data for years. Seeing this concept generate so much discussion at the event was thrilling because I feel MySpace is best-positioned to capitalize on this trend. Another thing you may not know is I recently released the second edition of my book, Information Architecture: Blueprints of the Web, which includes an entire new chapter devoted to social design and creating architecture for social. Social is the hot topic of conversation at conferences I attend. It's really critical to build a social environment that allows people to interact in an enjoyable way. The book also covers a lot about general Web design and the importance of looking at how all of the pieces for a large site, such as MySpace, come together to create the ideal social experience. I have been working with the architecture of large Web sites for so many years and social the last five, so MySpace is a fabulous challenge for me.

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Getting Social with MySpace GM of Social Christina Wodtke

David Cohen

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David Cohen