For months, concerns about the content and audience of the social networking site MySpace have been expressed by parents, school officials, law enforcement authorities, and the media. However, amid pressure from these groups, it may be a financial motivation that ultimately leads MySpace to "clean house." MySpace is one of the ten most popular destinations on the Web. Claiming 69 million members, it is certainly the best-known and most-visited social networking site. As such, it is uniquely situated for commercial exploitation, as any number of bands, comedians, and other entertainers can attest. However, to make MySpace a truly profitable venture, as News Corporation must surely have intended when it paid $580 million for the site, it must appeal to traditional advertisers with larger budgets. Those advertisers are unlikely to pay for placement on a site that has been called a predators playground and is associated with acts of violence, drug use, sex crimes, and pornography on a nearly daily basis. (In the last twenty-four hours: alleged child pornography and defamation, an alleged probation violation, and a story detailing the use of MySpace by violent street gangs.) News Corporation realizes the economic realities at play and seems to have developed a program aimed at increasing the value of the MySpace asset. A new security czar has been appointed to police the site and MySpace has begun running public service advertisements designed to warn parents and children of the dangers posed by a portion of the sites users. Though these efforts, together with those aspects of the program which have yet to be revealed, will begin to ease the pressure exerted by parents and governmental officials, it is ultimately the power of e-commerce that will make MySpace safer for children. After all, it was the power of MySpace as a potential advertising medium that lead to Rupert Murdochs interest in acquiring the site. Over the next few months, we should expect to see MySpace continue to work with government officials and parents groups to increase protections for its underage visitors. We should expect to see periodic announcements of new restrictions on content and membership. Most of all, we should expect to see MySpace become a major player in Internet marketing, as it leads social networking sites to new models of profitability. |
