<![CDATA[Gizmodo: myspace news]]> http://tags.gizmodo.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gizmodo.com.png <![CDATA[Gizmodo: myspace news]]> http://gizmodo.com/tag/myspacenews http://gizmodo.com/tag/myspacenews <![CDATA["Mad Dog" Murdoch to Teach a Generation How To Read The News]]> Tickled with the fact that there are over 100 million users of his MySpace networking site, but irked that members of the Ritalin generation only spend like two seconds on their pages each day, Rupert Murdoch (or at least, his company News Corp.) is planning to launch MySpace News.

According to Reuters, the service will be a combination of Google News and Digg, both aggregating the most popular news stories around the Web and adding "a social element to traditional news consumption by giving readers the ability to determine what becomes the top news on MySpace." In other words, in spite of there being 25 categories and 300 subcategories, it still might end up "all K-Fed, all the time." If it does, you have only the kids to blame.

Something is definitely going on. Follow the jump to see what happened when visited news.myspace.com.

By a not terribly wild guess, we determined that the URL of the new site will be news.myspace.com. This morning, the following dialog box confirmed our guess:
MySpaceNews_pword.jpg

Keep checking that URL, because the MySpace News beta may start today. Just remember, News Corp. didn't make its name by giving people the news; it made it by selling ads. The more you participate in MySpace, the more exciting you will be to advertisers. That, according to the story, is Murdoch's main motivation. If you don't think you're being targeted, pay attention to the word "target" in the following quote:

"Many advertisers have expressed interest in the service, which allows them to target the MySpace community in a more direct way," Brian Norgard, co-founder of Newroo, a company purchased by News Corp. last year, which created MySpace News' technology, said in an interview.

Go ahead, it's okay to sell your soul. All we ask is that you vote for a Gizmodo story or three each and every time you're on MySpace News. Thanks in advance.

MySpace to test news service to boost ad revenue [Reuters]

]]>
http://gizmodo.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=253606&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[MySpace News to Take On Digg]]> MySpace is planning on launching MySpace News in the second quarter of this year, a new service that will combine the news aggregation of Google News with the community rating system of Digg.

Will this be a strong competitor to Digg, or will MySpace News provide content for a sperate demographic? After all, I'm sure the MySpace population won't go crazy over the same Apple/HDR Photo/Self-referential/Consumer advocacy stuff that Digg does. One would expect the content to be much less tech-based and more pop culture centric. It should be interesting to see how this affects the online media scene and if Digg sees a drop in users.

Mashable.com [via Digg, of course]

]]>
http://gizmodo.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=243077&view=rss&microfeed=true