Last week saw the launch by Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace of a social news site. As with sites such as digg.com (with which the MySpace effort has received unsurprisingly unflattering comparisons), users can submit stories which they think may be of interest to other users, who are then asked to vote on whether they think those stories are any good.

Personally I don’t see how this can fail, or why any savvy marketer would not want to get involved. Contrary to popular opinion, MySpace is not a refuge for teenagers online. In fact, the biggest demographic group visiting MySpace is the 35+ age range (as opposed to Facebook which really does seem to be for those in their 20s or younger).

The other factor which should excite anyone interested in building a relationship with their audience is the amount of time which people spend on MySpace. Although Google, Yahoo! & MSN may live at the top of Alexa’s list of the 500 most popular sites, MySpace apparently accounts for 12% of all time spent online in the US. No, you didn’t read that wrong - of all time spent online by people in the US, 1 out of every 8 minutes was spent on MySpace.

So, MySpace accounts for 12% of time spent online in the US, is the 5th most popular site globally (6th in the UK), and its main audience is people aged over 35. Can anyone honestly think of any reason why brands wouldn’t want to be using the MySpace new social news site, even if it is as badly designed as the rest of the site? Especially as it only takes 2 votes right now to get a story to the home page. Nope - neither can we.

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