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News broke recently that MySpace has made its move to focus on something else since losing the so-called social networking war to Facebook. Chief executive Owen Van Natta states “MySpace won’t just be focusing on music as its attraction but on all creative areas. He doesn’t want the company to be backed into one corner…” and wants to reposition itself as a “window for the youth (16-30) to reflect all their creative talents.”

Is it just me or is this limited window of ages 16-30 still backing MySpace into a corner? I mean, seriously, I’d thought the concept of creativity was by its very nature “young”; anything that is created is new, is fresh, and is youthful. So why do they want to preclude their site’s productivity to a numbered age range?

It might be that old school marketing is stuck in their numbers game again. After all statistics do show that social networking sites are frequented more by people in their youth because they actually care about socializing and making friends. Whereas people into their 30’s and beyond don’t socialize as much because they’re raising families, blah, blah, blah. And the fact that Twitter users have less of the youth demographic and are older is likely because it’s not as “sociable” either.

But if we want to play that game the globe is actually facing an aging population and, standing on this metric alone, it doesn’t make sense to provide less of a space for the arts to flourish from age 31+.

While it’s great MySpace is expanding from solely a musical base but providing the space only for a designated age range is just another example of old business executives perpetuating old business contradictions; experimenting with bottom-line security is risky so let’s show how much we care about the youth at their youth by exploiting their inherently risky endeavors. Is it any wonder history repeats itself?

Some at MySpace could give me the middle-fingered “this is taken out of context” PR’d speech but I defy the term “youth creativity” as defined by physical age. It’s just a number. Instead the term should be defined by how fresh and relevant it is to the market regardless of how old and by whom the artist had created it.

I’m certainly not underestimating MySpace’s viewership and market reach (hell, I have an account there). But they may want to take a different angle at how art is produced. Like the US Census Bureau, demographic statistics are decreasing in importance. Psychographic studies rather addresses the how and doesn’t need to know the who; we’re all human.

So in other areas of art where age matters less and arts matter more check out some inspired works at deviantART–a fresh community site that is as old as BBS.

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