Will Ruport Murdoch's Corporate Management Take the Fun Out of MySpace?

[mandy]

...two strategic issues remain. The first is whether the managerial ethos of a Big Media company will eventually take the fun out of Myspace. The site is now heavily policed for 'taste and decency', and News Corporation lawyers are increasingly jumpy about allegations that sexual predators roam.

Second, there is the problem of how to 'monetise' Myspace activity. Advertising is an obvious answer, but the kinds of pages that Myspace users create - complete with flashing images, conflicting colours and unreadable text - are an ad man's nightmare. Result: Myspace is unlikely to earn more than $200m this year.

Last week saw the first effects of Murdoch's pressure to get a return from his new asset (he's demanding annual revenues of $1bn from online properties by the end of the decade). On Tuesday his lieutenant, Peter Chernin, began to make threatening noises about the way Myspace users are allowed to import feeds from other sites, such as YouTube and Flickr, thereby driving web traffic their way...

full article: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/...01,00.html