"Two-year-old MySpace is a next-generation Friendster--a series of individualized Web pages maintained by some 46.7 million users, who generate 12.5 billion page views a month." - Forbes

Wow... that's very impressive but I still just can't get that excited about even MY MySpace. Sure I stayed up late and tricked out the default page a little. Added some friends and then I just got bored. Its social networking for the sake of social networking. Okay I can understand that concept, but I can also understand the concept of traffic funnelling since after all myspace.com has a Google page rank of 8. Using my MySpace as one more SEO and traffic tool makes me a lot more interested than the quick little "just wanted to say hi" posts.

Now it does have its place, my wife and her friends love it and it is perfect for my friend's band.

"We didn’t stop people from promoting whatever they wanted to promote on MySpace." - Tom Anderson said in the Forbes article (yeah for all 3 of you that have never been to MySpace he like co-founded it)

Well now that IS good to know. So of course I link to this site from my-myspace site, but I am not expecting to reap a huge benefit for myself. Still not my thing. BUT... if your website fits the audience of MySpace users then its a whole 'nother story.

What audiences are the right fit? Music and media, like my friend's band, local radio or even your favorite TV show are big promoters on MySpace. Zachary Rodgers reports that there are "660,000 musicians and bands among its user profiles". Nike, Honda and Movies have all created profiles of their products. And FOX News reports that 40% of all internet traffic at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas was for MySpace.

Businesses pushing products toward youth markets are also smart to get into the scene. Jeremiah the Web Prophet posted an article regarding a skate company promoting through myspace using these great little banner ads. Wait did I say banner ads in MySpace... yes they found a way to use Flash players which are not banned by the site (javascripts are disabled).

Promotion can be as simple as branding or as direct as "buy now", wait isn't that copyright'd, aaahh "buy here". Myspace allows users to send out bulletins to everyone in your "friends list". These lists can include 10s of thousands of people and offer repeatable chances to market to your audience.

Here is where my interest lies. By younger brother has a great photography business starting up and for his situation I think MySpace is perfect. He creates a space called "BenjaminAsherStudios" or something catchy and then pimps himself out to the community. He offers his studio service to anyone in the North Texas area and offers his Photoshop image editing skills and online print processing to anyone anywhere. Well that is the general thought I pitched to him, but you know those artist types... my stick drawings of traffic flow lacked "linear depth perspective".

So branding your product through myspace can help create brand/product awareness and also boost page rank through refering links. But just like traditional SEO it won't happen unless you put effort into it.