A New Search for MySpace

garzpacho writes "Businessweek is reporting on MySpace's new strategy. They're going to pit the large engines against each other in a bidding war to provide the popular social networking site with a new search engine. From the article: 'Search is a driver of traffic and advertising revenue for other major Web destinations, but it's a largely untapped source of growth for MySpace and other Fox Interactive Media properties such as online gaming site IGN and sports site Scout. Given MySpace's power, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN are expected to compete fiercely for the right to be the search engine of choice for MySpace and the rest of Fox Interactive. News Corp. won't say how much money it expects to derive from a deal, but industry experts say it could conceivably boost MySpace's annual revenue several times over.'"

Revenue Battle:Content Provider vs Search Engines

[ikejam]

This could be the begining of a trend where content providers start to demand more share of the monies to be made of the internet - obviously now only second-tier providers with aggregated content/large-scale hosting have the leverage but perhaps in the future....

Re:Quality or quantity?

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Okay.

No.

Teenage girls drive entire markets. Know American Idol? Brittney Spears? InSync? Backstreet Boys? You think only college aged kids are buying this stuff? No. The music industry is run by teenaged girls, has been since the Beatles / Monkees.

Ever hear a story of how your co-workers' (or your) girls have like four outfits for everything? Know a girl who works in a shop and says, "Yeah, I spend most of my paycheck right here."

Many teens are: 1) not set in your was as far as who you will buy from. 2) not responsible enough to think, "Should I save this for a rainy day if possible?" 3) not paying their expenses yet. 4) Capable of moving up to a decent salary within 10 years. 5) More "Herd-Motivated" than most people. (even though most Americans are pretty socialized anyways)

Those are just the reasons I can think of off the top of my head; companies market like rabid dogs towards teenagers. They just look so tasty as a market.

Re:Quality or quantity?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the same until I looked around on the site. Myspace is used by a lot more than teenyboppers, it's also a completely free online dating site, where you can check out people's profiles and actually send them full messages with no cost whatsoever. My single friends are loving it. Sites like lavalife are losing a lot of customers.