MySpace (News Corp.) and Burger King
I am still trying to figure out how to make a cool del.icio.us feed a part of this blog. Most recently, I have attempted to set up a del.icio.us daily blog posting, of course unsuccessfully. I am subscribing to several RSS feeds, and it would be nice to pass on this information--especially updates from PR Newswire about recent promotional partnerships, etc.--to the many, many readers of this blog.
In the meantime, liberal music organizer and religion student/pundit Kevin Erickson has sent me an ad banner culled from the pages of MySpace, shown here:
Clicking on the ad directs a user to the Burger King MySpace profile, where free episodes of Fox and FX network television shows are offered up as "Gifts from the King." The partnership is interesting, because, as far as I know, Burger King is not in any way affiliated with News Corp, the Rupert Murdoch-led media conglomerate that runs Fox, billions of other media channels, and, most recently, has acquired MySpace. Burger King is thus the equivalent of an advertiser advertising on a network, yet it is also promoting the network in a way not entirely dissimilar from its previous in-store toy and sweepstakes promotions.
Burger King's alliance with Fox in this instance is thoroughly co-branded (who is promoting who?), and signals the QSR's hearty alignment with a new "corporate" MySpace: the company-controlled, News Corp. version. This might provide us with a glimpse of the future of MySpace. As they become more popular, social networking sites become more lucrative to advertisers, giving corporations an incentive to regulate and control them. Of course, this may not be a bad thing for most of the teens and/or young adults and/or grown adults using the website, as evidenced by Burger King's 88,434 MySpace friends (I have 148).
I saved a handful of links related to this/these new development(s) in the MySpace universe, but I can't get my del.icio.us sidebar or daily links entry to work. When it works, everything will be exactly great.