KEY POINTS:
For some reason I seem to be starting most of my blogs with questions this week and MySpace's partnership with the BBC throws up another one.
MySpace is the social networking website popular with the youth market, the core user base is in the 16 - 24 age group. MySpace tells me there are 449,606 registered MySpace users in New Zealand, and that 15,711 local bands have a presence on the website, which has become a hub for established and new musicians looking for an audience.
MySpace, which has 110 million members and its contemporary Bebo, differ from Facebook in their younger skew, which makes the tie-up to feature BBC TV programmes on the MySpace (www.myspace.com/bbcworldwide) interesting. The BBC's flagship programmes are aimed at a more mature, conservative audience and indeed, the shows featured on MySpace will include Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear, Richard Attenborough's natural history series and old re-reruns of Doctor Who, Robin Hood and Red Dwarf.
I'm not complaining, I love all those shows, but I'm not quite the MySpace demographic. Which makes me wonder whether MySpace is nervous about Facebook's popularity with the more mature audience, the audience with more cash in its pockets.
Or maybe it is just the Beeb broadening its policy of opening its catalogue up further. After all, it has done a similar deal with Youtube and developed the iPlayer so that people based in the United Kingdom can watch new and archived BBC content online whenever they want to.
MySpace is really pushing its MySpaceTV (http://www.myspacetv.com) platform and this deal seems to be a bid to move the content beyond the pop culture and reality TV
Will you be tuning into MySpace to watch the BBC online?
