MySpace confronts YouTube

 

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By Steve Malone

Posted on 17 Oct 2006 at 11:39

Changes made to the MySpace site over the weekend are perhaps the first sign that Rupert Murdoch intends to make good his claim to 'crush YouTube in 60 -70 days'.

The MySpace home page has now acquired four new links in the prime top left hand corner displaying links to popular MySpace videos.

In addition, according to Search Engine Journal, there is a new section included with every profile called 'My Video Space' that automatically includes a video to your profile if you upload one. Previously, users had to cut and paste code onto their site if they wanted to display video from either MySpace, YouTube or any other video sharing site. The new move gives MySpace Video an extra lift in terms of usability.

The timing of the changes might be seen as a response to the sale of YouTube to Google last week. However, it is more likely that the changes have been in the pipeline for a while and the timing is mostly coincidental.

Even before Murdoch's declaration of war, News Corp already had good reason to be looking askance at the upstart video sharing site. While MySpace has an overwhelming 79.9 per cent of the total number of US website visits, YouTube has over 60 per cent of the video market even though MySpace has around 100 million visitors a month compared with only 20 million for YouTube. Much of this traffic comes from MySpace which has fed YouTube to the extent that it has now commanded a $1.6 billion price tag.

Nevertheless, at least MySpace is not doing what many feared, which is to actually make it difficult or impossible to link to YouTube videos.