Google Signs $900m MySpace Deal 213
deadmantyping writes "Google has signed a $900m deal with Fox to provide search capabilities for Fox sites, the most noteworthy of which is MySpace. This deal does not include FoxSports.com, which already has a deal with MSN. Google claims that 'MySpace was an important site to be involved with given its rapid popularity growth.' Google also signed a deal with MTV earlier in the week."
crazy, google, myspace (Score:1, Insightful)
Myspace taking over...... (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems like everybody is using the website now. I can understand that people want to host their own content.
Why then, are movies using myspace? Talladega nights advertises its offical url as http://myspace.com/rickybobby [myspace.com]. Why? Why not just have a regular website? Or is there something i'm missing?
Re:Myspace taking over...... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're evidently not 14.
Re:finally something (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Myspace taking over...... (Score:5, Insightful)
The bottom line is that a myspace link is familiar to lots of people, easy to access, easy to create, and plays into the social networking scheme that myspace yields. If someone can add "Ricky Bobby" to their myspace friends account, or whatever (I don't use myspace, so I don't know exactly how it works), but for a very small amount of effort, and likely no funding (they can rehash their own promotional materials) they can reach a number of people, and then (and this is where MySpace has another significant advantage) reach the people those people have friended on myspace, because the friends will see the user's like for the movie. Thus, for almost nothing, the marketers can reach people that wouldn't normally access the site.
Re:Excellent! (Score:2, Insightful)
Vapid, self-obsessed, score-keeping emo-inanities will now be even easier to find! And that's just the garage bands.
C'mon. This is why eBay is so successful. Not because they have the best approach or the best business model, hell from what I've seen they're a mindless bunch of jerks who change their site arbitrarily in not necessarily good ways. Even the best practices seem to evade them for years.
It's simply where the herd is. And when the herd is all in one spot, very few feel compelled, until significant pain or market forces dictate they must move elsewhere, even that will likely be a mass migration to the next place. That you and I don't see it as exciting should tell both of us that we are outside the bell-curve. (Either that or these people have it fatally wrong and won't know it until a year or so from now when it all goes tits up, just like a lot of the really dumb ideas of the dot-com bubble.)
Myspace doesn't HAVE a search function (Score:3, Insightful)
Go to "myspace groups". Try doing a search for anything. The result set is always ALL the groups, thus making it useless.
Heck, the 'add to favorites' has bad strings in it(look at the confirmation page). Apparently someone doesn't know how to spell favorite.
Hey myspace, how about signing a captcha deal to stop the spammer bots?
Re:Myspace taking over...... (Score:1, Insightful)
a copy and paste from one of my old posts
#rant
okay okay......
for the longest time nerds were outcasted when the net first started.
myspace is a way for the rest of the non-tech-savvy people to catch up.
when geocities.com first started in the mid-90's, every tech/geek/nerd/etc had a webpage that looked not as high quality but just and loud and annoying as the my space profiles these "teens" create.
the world has caught up, and now they are making webpages
myspace = animated hell
geocites = over use of the blink tag and who the fark though it would be cool to have lime green text over a bgimage that looks like a bad shirt from the 70's.
basically i am saying.. the rest of the world is adopting the internet. they arent as tech savvy so they use myspace because its easy... half of them just copy and paste code, dont tell me you havent done that ever. dont get me wrong i am not trying to say it is right to have a bad webpage/profile/blog/whatever, but i am saying it is a trend like neon hot pants in the 80's. its big bold and ugly, but give it time and people will realize that jerry curl(read: myspace profile) isnt cool anymore.
also if you give them BS now some might stray forever away from the net.
Re:Myspace taking over...... (Score:5, Insightful)
For one thing it's potentially a marketing goldmine.
"Rickybobby" has 60,000 "friends." It could be 600,000 in a couple of months. Almost all of these "friends" are in the coveted teens-and-twenties demographic. The fact that they are willing to be friends with a movie means they're susceptible to advertising. They will be getting messages and emails and "friend invites" from upcoming movies and who-knows-what-else from Sony Pictures for a long time to come.
Why do you think Myspace is worth so much to Fox? It's a database of millions of teenagers who proudly list their interests and hobbies.
Re:Myspace taking over...... (Score:5, Insightful)
wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
As we watch it, google is inventing the new economy in the new society. They will establish themselves in such a way that a severe impact on Google's functions will be visibly noticed, and by everyone. So they collaborate with MTV, the largest major youth/indepedant media business in the myspace nation. One metaphor would be that MTV is the natural gas that these kids cook things up with.
This now becomes political, especially with Google where it is on the net-neutrality issues. Say the government forces Google to do something that adversely impacts these members of myspace. Voices begin to be heard, and these people will be voting soon.
Here's a couple of questions. How many members of MySpace will be turning old enough to vote by the time Bush is to be replaced? Is that enough to sway a victory? And, what's going to happen when the myspace nation finds a political leader?
The shit's boiling over and the fans are on high. I don't want to be in here but I'm wearing my yellow slicker.
Re:Myspace taking over...... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's largely the "there's enough going on to keep me distracted for an entire workday" factor that makes slashdot so... um... slashdotty.
Yeah, something like that.
Re:Myspace taking over...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe its just Rupert flexing his muscle.
Why all the hate? (Score:4, Insightful)
As I read these replies where the majority are negative on MySpace, it reminds me when AOL first had access to usenet, but not as bad. Back then, everyone was worried about the influx of nubes. And rightfuly so. But with MySpace, they have their own place, they are not making the haters go there, they are doing what the internet promised. I think it is a good thing. Kids today are treating the internet like a tool and not some secret society. If you all don't like it, do what we have been saying for other forms of media you don't care for, turn the damn channel!
Re:I just hate it when... (Score:3, Insightful)
Rupert Murdoch ($500M for myspace.com) gets to tug on his suspenders and say, "Guess I'm not so dumb after all."
Heh. Nobody should ever accuse him (or his buddy W, for that matter) of being dumb. It gives too much benefit of the doubt.
Getting serious for a second, though, it's good to see that MySpace is finally doing something about their search capability. You can put just about anything into their current search engine, and go through the results it returns with a fine-toothed comb and not find a single instance of any search term in the results. I think it just calls a random-number generator.
Re:Myspace taking over...... (Score:1, Insightful)
People are social animals. We are wired to talk to each other, we enjoy it. One thing that myspace gives is the feeling of informality that makes it ok to just say hi to someone you haven't talked to in years, "just because they are on myspace." I moved high schools in my junior year, and due to a lack of a car, I lost touch with eventually just about all of my old friends. Then one day, out of nowhere I got a friend request from one of my old buddies. It was a good feeling to reconnect, and thats one of the larger draws. Through him I found a bunch of other people that I used to hang out with also.
The "network effect" of myspace is also what draws people in. Its kind of boring when you have 10 friends and nothing is really going on. But slowly and steadily you build your friendbase and those messages that only get sent every once in awhile start to occur on a daily or more than daily basis.
This is analogous to real life. If you only have one friend, chances are the phone is not going to ring all that much. However, if you have 10 good friends, chances are a good deal better someone is going to call you up to make plans for the weekend. You make friends with the friends of your friends, suddenly you may have 40-50 people in your "extended network" that may just call to say hello or invite you out.
There is also the anonymous "stalking" factor that seems to be a somewhat unique pastime to people in my age group. We are just nosy and want to see what others are up to. There are people I knew in college who I am not really all that interested in hanging out with or calling up, but I am curious to know what they are up to (and maybe see how successful I am compared to them, I am a competitive mofo). I often don't even list these people as friends, but I just go to their page, see where they are living, what they are doing, who they are dating, etc.
Myspace reminds me of AIM back when it first came out. People loved the informalness of it all. Eventually AIM kind of matured to the point where it became a more serious medium of communication, and now its considered kind of odd to just IM someone out of the blue. Myspace does not yet have that stigma, its still pretty much a hey wanna be my friend? great! kind of place.
Yes, there are many aspects that suck. I can't believe the garbage pages that many of my friends put up. It is slow and buggy as hell, and frequently doesn't even work. There are "friend whores" all over the place that just see their number of friends as some kind of score (remind you of the days on slashdot before the karma caps at all?) If I had my way, I would strictly enforce the types of pages people could put up, put options on to shut off all sounds and videos if you didnt want to be subjected to them, and make the ads far less obtrusive. The site would really be many times better if they provided some clean, professional looking templates to use. I would also halt all new feature development until the site is up and running without the massive amount of glitches it encounters today. I would also clean up the site's design, there is just so much coming at you on the main login pages and such that you cant concentrate on anything, it quite literally makes my head hurt.
Anyway, thats my diatribe on why I use myspace. Saying you don't like myspace because of the idiot teens is like saying you won't go to the mall because of those damn kids! Yes, it has its problems, but you take the bad with the good.