Paul Gourbould has an entertaining post on his MySpace experience up today and, while he has many good and valid points, because I'm mentioned in it, I thought I should respond.
I have never encouraged an individual to use MySpace. MySpace is owned by Fox and Fox and it's owner Rupert Murdoch are undoubtedly evil.
However, aside from Google perhaps, mySpace is also the internet hit of the decade. Even YouTube owes at least part of it's success to mySpace. Given it's success and tens of millions of users, it cannot be ignored.
What I have done with MySpace is a bit of Judo (which relies heavily on using your enemies strength against him.) MySpace is fairly unregulated - Fox is, after all, cheap and it would take a staff of thousands to monitor the activity of the tens of millions of MySpace users. So, Fox sets up weak guidelines and allows a free for all.
I have used MySpace to promote The CBC, at Rupert Murdoch's expense, and to promote my website as well as Canadian blogs, vlogs, podcasts, television, film, bands, artists, photographers, theatre, books, web sites etc., and to network with Canadian artists, content creators, activists and fans. I have heard from many, many people who discovered Canadian offerings (see list above) through my MySpace accounts and, because of the international nature of the site, not all of them were Canadians.
I don't have hard figures, but I'd say that for every penny Murdoch has made from the ads on my MySpace account, a Canadian has made a few dollars. When you consider the competitive nature of media, it is quite likely that Fox has actually lost money from my being there.
It is worth mentioning too that anyone who is going to upload content to MySpace should carefully read the terms of service, you may be giving Fox more rights than you want to, and you can always just put the content on a different site and link to it.
So to recap, Fox is evil, Murdoch is evil but never before has CanCon had such easy, free access to international advertising - all paid for by Fox.
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1 comment:
Good points about MySpace you made. I have an account just to monitor the buzz, etc, and see for myself why it's so bad. I'll add you as a MySpace friend.
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