According to Online Media Daily, NewsCorp is looking to “broaden the advertising pool for MySpace to attract more brand advertisers”. As part of the initiative the company is putting more resources into deleting risque and offensive content, and has so far removed more than 200,000 profiles it deemed questionable.
One of the reasons why MySpace is cool and attracts so many 18-to-34-year-old users is because some of its user generated content is risque and offensive. On the other hand, its this content that makes the big companies reluctant to use MySpace as an advertising vehicle.
Sounds like a catch 22 to me. I wonder at what point will censorship make MySpace dull, in which case it won’t be of interest to the advertisers.
I would suggest NewsCorp has some thinking to do about what it is that makes MySpace cool. After all, if you want to visit a dull version of MySpace, just go over to Friendster.