So MySpace and our buddy Rupert Murdoch grace the cover of Wired this month. You’ll find that I am not a fan of the MySpace, more on that later. However, there are a couple of interesting things in this article that caught my attention.

I hope, beyond hope, that Rupert’s purchase of MySpace kills it. Fundamentally I love the idea of an online community with this kind of market share, but unfortunately MySpace has proven several theories of monkeys in groups and become quite a bad place. Let’s start with something that Murdoch said that I think has the potential to destroy MySpace (this is some creative quoting by the way):

“[The main challenges of capitalizing on MySpace are] avoid doing anything that might interfere with the runaway growth that has already made MySpace the biggest aggregation of people on the Web. Step two is to turn MySpace’s teeming masses into a wholly new kind of media entity, an advertising, marketing, and distribution vehicle that gives News Corp. a hand on the steering wheel of popular culture worldwide.”

See, now that just sounds scary. That sounds like what I’d expect out of News Corp. And you know that they are in business to make money, not support some interesting new use of technology. So, how long before step two overpowers step one?

Speaking of the business of making money, the article also points out that even at the rate of a revenue doubling every quarter they are still only pulling $200M, less than 5% of Yahoo’s bling. Combine that with the fact they passed on purchasing IGN for MySpace, which seems crazy to me. Sure there are more eyeballs on MySpace but IGN has had advertising, successful advertising since day one. As a business model it makes a ton more sense.

Speaking of business models, the most effective “advertising” on the site right now is free - profiles that promote movies and products and encourage kids to add them as friends. Wired claims that the X-Men profile pulled 1.6M friends, which is a smart deal if the company (or movie, or whatever) is dishing out little bits of information leading up to the release. It is like an old school fan club, only feeding you on the front end. I believe that MySpace does have some fee structure for purely advertising based profiles, but companies can certainly work around that.

This is certainly the first of MANY posts on MySpace, but I was pleased with the Wired article. I have to admit that when my wife brought it into my office and said “you’ll love this, Rupert Murdoch and MySpace are on the cover” that I wasn’t too thrilled. Overall, though, it is a good read and has some interesting insights into what a huge challenge they have on their hands.