MySpace in Talks with Google and MSN... not Yahoo
Financial Times reports that MySpace is in talks with both Google and MSN in an effort to monetize those billions of page views.

[MySpace] is discussing an alliance that would let one of the search giants supply internet searches on its pages, along with adverts tied to results, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Nicholas Carr writes:

It's hard to imagine either of these two bitter competitors ceding the sexy MySpace real estate to the other without a fight. So look for MySpace to get a deal that gives it the lion's share of any ad revenues as well as, if it's smart, either a cash payment upfront or some kind of guaranteed minimum payment.

So who's gonna get it? Google's recent spate of social-search related projects could well be wooing tools for the deal. MSN Live is, to me, promising from an innovation perspective, I think they're still a year or two out from really determining a strong direction.

It will come down to the cash though of course - NewsCorp is not likely to make decisions based on social search add on functionalities. My gut says Google - based on their cash reserves and winning the AOL deal vs. MSN too.

This partnership is vital - not only from the perspective of gaining more revenue, but from understanding what's really happening under the hood at MySpace. If I were Murdoch I wouldn't let either one in.

Yahoo's Missing From the Talks
Yahoo's conspicuously missing from the talks... because they see MySpace as more of a competitor than either Google or MSN. See Yahoo MyWeb's Gonna Kick MySpace in the Jimmies for more on what I thought Yahoo was doing a month and a half ago.

Also see Adam Schultz's Yahoo piece... he points in a direction for Yahoo that MySpace is likely headed in as well.

...and now MySpace's quick correction of my story about a partnership with Search Vortals makes even MORE sense.

Update Oop! Yahoo already powers MySpace search according to Bambi Francisco. I need to dig back into the history of this relationship in order to better understand this most recent news. Watch for update 2, 3, etc... ;)

Update 2: I dug around but could only find a casual mention that "Web results look like they are using yahoo" in an SEOchat forum thread. Anyone care to chime in on this? Also, I suspect that the deal will result in a more prominant position for search in MySpace, and, I hope, a more creative and useful search approach than now exists.

Update 3:martin comments that: "Currently they use Yahoo. Just checked. All the links are labeled Overture on the status bar preview."

My suspicion is that this is not a huge source of revenue for Yahoo. Why? Because they're not reported to be in talks. But then... why would MySpace search traffic be interesting to Google and MSN?

Well, if we take the reports to be true I think it means that MySpace is likely to overhaul its approach to search, and Yahoo was not seen as a good partner for this as Google will be. Speculating is almost TOO much fun ;)
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |