Bryan D. Brown

I love the internet. Despite the fact that I’m finding myself growing more cynical about various types of media, I still love the internet. It seems, like never before, almost anything is available online. Gone are FCC restrictions and corporate-filtered content - unless, of course, that is what you are wanting. While I easily get bored of television and radio (more the former than the latter), the internet never seems to bore me.

Social networking, however, is another thing entirely. The MySpace phenomenon has me a bit perplexed. There is something oddly sinister about MySpace. Wired Magazine recently did a cover story in their July 2007 issue, titled His Space, discussing the role of MySpace in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire. It’s a must read for anyone even remotely curious about these social networking sites in the world of new media.

In some ways, online social networking isn’t really anything new. The internet has always been about interacting with people in various forms. Blogs, message boards, e-mail, instant messenger - the internet medium has always facilitated communication in both active and passive ways. Without the people, there would be no internet. Every step of the way - from pop-ups to spam - corporations have tried to make money off those who use those services.

Rupert Murdoch, however, is in a different world with News Corps’ $580 million purchase of MySpace. Murdoch’s goal is to turn MySpace into a pool of 80 million potential consumers, all of who could be the recipients of targeted marketing campaigns, Google-esque advertising searches, and potential purchasers of content.

One way or another, Murdoch talks about News Corp.?s Internet investments generating $1 billion a year by the end of the decade. Ads alone may not be able to accomplish that, but as [Ross Levinsohn, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Fox Sports Interactive Media] points out, ?there are a thousand ways to make money when you have this many people.?

In other words, how to sell these members to advertisers and content providers. Every profile added, every member that joins, every uploaded picture, uploaded MP3, comment and blog, is stored in a searchable database. Every piece of information you enter about yourself could be of interest to someone looking to make a buck. With a membership of over 80 million, the financial potential is fairly limitless. As the article points out, however, the gamut of useful to useless information is wide. Determining how to query that database, however, in order to appropriately target advertisers is only a matter of time:

In theory, all those millions of lovingly, often exhaustively detailed personal profiles ought to make it possible to deduce a user’s interests. But no one knows how to do it, certainly not on an industrial scale. That’s why Ross Levinsohn spends his days scrutinizing advanced search technologies. “Believe me,” he says, “we?’re seeing every VC’s deck.”

Meanwhile… they’ve zeroed in on what the industry calls immersive ad campaigns: commercial MySpace profiles that publicize movies, albums, and consumer products. These promotions get an initial push on the site’s heavily trafficked public pages and then - if all goes well - spread virally as users add the products represented to their list of friends. (By the time Fox’s X-Men: The Last Stand opened in May, its elaborately conceived MySpace profile had already attracted 1.6 million friends.)

So in some capacity, the members are doing the work for them. For those behind these types of marketing campaigns, it’s even better - MySpace members are marketing their products without even being asked to do it. Much like spending $40 bucks on shirt with a Nike swoosh on the front, MySpace members are marketing products not just because it is a cool thing to do, but because it’s a part of their on-line identity. In a MySpace member’s mind, it’s a part of who they are. These marketing profiles are even called “friends”.

With friends like that…