A Funny Way to Draw Advertising on MySpace

MySpace, the insanely-popular social networking site (about half my students said they had sites and more than half admitted to at least visiting MySpace), is improving its comedy section with material from professional comedians. This is being done in an attempt to make the site a more attractive place for mainstream advertisers to peddle their wares.

Oddly, the problem isn't drawing a large audience. MySpace is drawing over 50 million web surfers a month. Nor is the problem drawing a favored audience demographic. MySpace excels in attracting the teenagers and young adults that many advertisers covet.

Actually, the problem is providing a digital page free of material that is too edgy, too tasteless, or just too out there for Corporate America. MySpace Comedy is likely to contain material that is on the edge, but at least it won't be over the edge. Or at least that's the hope.

This reminds me of something I read a few years back when there were a lot of super-trashy daytime talk shows on TV. The article said that some of the particularly low-rent talk shows began to die off not so much because their audiences dwindled or because they were being harrassed by the FCC. No, the problem was that advertisers were bailing because the shows were getting into topics that the advertisers just didn't want to be associated with. I remember that one of the shows had been deemed too classless by a company advertising bug spray.