MySpace Strategy

Here's an interesting segment from an article about MySpace from BusinessWeek (June 2006). Just another example of the power and importance that search plays in the future success of the web.

RICH IN DATA. Senior News Corp. management is working to bring MySpace's business model up to scale. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin announced a big step in that direction during a speech on June 13 in which he outlined the company's new online search strategy. 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 (FIM) properties such as online gaming site IGN and sports site Scout (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/2/06, "News Corp.'s New Net Bets").

Given MySpace's power, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and MSN (MSFT) 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. "The deal will probably be worth hundreds of millions of dollars," says Chris Sherman, executive editor of Searchenginewatch.com.

The punchline to the segment above is that MySpace now features Google Search. Here's a follow up article.