MySpaceTV takes on YouTube

Stephen Withers
Friday, 29 June 2007 11:42

Your IT - Home IT

MySpace aims to make its video-sharing side more prominent with the launch of MySpaceTV.com.

In addition to user-created clips, the site will also deliver branded channels. MySpace recently reached an agreement with Sony to use clips from the latter's 1980s sitcoms including Diff'rent  Strokes. The presentation of these clips will be sponsored by Sony.

It would be surprising if content from other parts of the News Corporation empire such as NBC Universal and Fox did not also appear on the site. (MySpace is a NewsCorp company.)

It is not necessary to log in as a MySpace member to use MySpaceTV, which should encourage users that don't fall into the typical MySpace demographic. That looks like a smart move, as MySpaceTV has a long way to go: according to Hitwise, YouTube gets 50 percent more visits from US users than all the other video sites combined.

MySpace's move to draw more attention to its video content could be seen as a response to YouTube's experiments with social networking.