Money where MySpace's mouth is

Much debate has taken place recently about the longevity of MySpace, especially since it has shown . But rather than engage in group hand-wringing rituals over the future, maybe parent company News Corp. and others should simply focus on the present.

"We've just scratched the surface of how to monetize it," News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin said this week. That slowness may turn out to be a case study for how not to run a social network.

The best way to approach the fleeting-fad syndrome is to treat all related businesses with an appropriately temporal time frame. If MySpace does turn out to be a fleeting fad, News Corp. could try to get ahead of the cycle and seed the site with pointers to the next budding networks or specialty communities. All forms of media have shelf lives, and social networks are no exception; they're just on an accelerated life cycle, as are all things on the Web.

Blog community response:

"There is one bit of info in the Mediapost article that '20 percent of the ad dollars comes from display impressions, with the rest stemming from sales of remnant inventory.' What does that mean? Remnant inventory of what? I'm extremely curious about what types of personal information MySpace's advertisers use for targeting: profile info? behavior? I am almost positive it's both, although I can't seem to find any indication from News Corp one way or another."
--Tiara.org

"After movies (Pirates of the Caribbean) and hamburgers (Burger King), MySpace opens its engine to the mobile industry via Motorola's My Very Thin Space, a profile created for the mobile brandÂ’s latest, Motorola Q. As of Friday, June, 9, the profile has accumulated 2,499 MySpace friends. Could this be online advertising 2.0?"
--Pandora Squared

"While fads may be only superficial reflections of culture, the effects are deepening. It feels like we are rushing towards something like global monoculture at an unbearable pace, like the momentum begun with the first primitive trading caravan is reaching terminal speed."
--Kingsbridge Correct