Where MySpace is headed, and what it means to you

Great article in the Hollywood Reporter about Rupert Murdoch’s plan for MySpace.com.

Here’s one nugget:

What’s next for [Fox Interactive Media] is leveraging MySpace’s online community and communication into a peer recommendations framework for leads on everything and anything: the best children’s playgrounds in Los Angeles to the best concert seats in Madison Square Garden to the best steakhouse in Dallas. Such peer recommendations provide a gentle seaway into targeted, fine-tuned behavioral marketing for national and local advertisers wanting to reach MySpace’s 15- to 34-year-old core user.

And once you have peer recommendations, you have a context for targeted advertising. If, for example, MySpace users in your market (and remember, there are nearly 100 million of them overall – although some are much more “active” than others) can direct your audience to the best place to buy an HD TV, then MySpace becomes the obvious place for your local HD TV shop (let alone Best Buy) to advertise.

How do you keep up with the pace of change? One way MySpace does it is by conducting daily online focus groups. Yes, I said daily.

How often does your outrageously profitable radio station research your audience?

Don’t be surprised if your audience finds marketers who understand them better online. And a richer, more relevant online environment at a URL that is not yours.