This Myspace Thing

I've been trying to figure out something ever since I read that Myspace is the sixth most popular website - how does it turn a profit? I assume it must be profitable because News Corporation spent a ton of money on it and Rupert Murdoch doesn't like to lose money on anything. Yet, I look at the pages and there is advertising which has to be worth quite a bit due to over 100 million users, but how many people click on that crap? Yet this thing has to cost a ton to run. It's got to have memory space and servers for over 100 million sites. There has to be some licensing for some of the music and videos. Paying a few hundred people to run it. That adds up.

Yet, it seems to have avoided one type of advertising yet still annoys with it. I got a small glimmer into Myspace the normal way. Some girl in your group at a bar is taking pictures and says she's putting them on her Myspace page. You go to make sure that there isn't a picture of me looking stupid (always a concerns for many of us), and you have to be registered to look at pictures. So, you try to register under your name, but it isn't available so you set up an email address based on your brand of bourbon and register under that name. You need a picture so you grab one off your hard drive, say a picture of a Denny Crum bobblehead. Add some personal information that may or may not be true. Write up a small blurb of stupid crap. Or as is often in my case, a long rambling blurb of stupid crap. So, now you're registered so you can look at the pictures. You look at the pictures and promptly forget that you even set the damned thing up.

You forget until much later when you're voting for something that uses email addresses to limit it. You're trying to maximize your voting and you remember the bourbon email address. And when you check it, it's still active (as is the Myspace page). Why is it still active? Because a bunch of strippers and two bit porn actresses wanted to be your friend. So, you're being spammed without Myspace being paid for it (supposedly). In fact, Myspace is subsidizing it. Doesn't seem like a solid business plan.