MySpace thinks about ecommerce
Interesting that MySpace would be thinking about person-to-person exchanges and opening up the door for people-to-people and business to people ecommerce on their web site. While Facebook already allows something like this, the problem is that MySpace caters to a different cliental, and allowing ecommerce is currently prohibited on the site.
If MySpace is to realize the goal of making more money than they are making now, and their current deal with Google for search, one of the possible ideas is to make a deal with Google checkout, and let people start selling their music, movies, or engage in person to person commerce, using the Google checkout backend for a cut of the deal or sale. This would allow people to sell stuff, and there is a lot of stuff on MySpace, as well as allowing News Corp and Google to profit from the process.
Although we are sure that PayPal is going to be right in there, but the thing we have noticed with PayPal is that every time we try to use it, the bank calls us to see if the transaction is a real transaction and did we authorize that. That would put a crimp in commerce immediately if PayPal was to bid on the thing, and won. Many transactions will fail if the person was not by the phone of record with the bank. It would make more sense for Google to take that on rather than having MySpace try to build their own ecommerce kit; Google would be willing and ready to make that happen.
The paper reports that one source said MySpace could be on the verge of a sweeping deal to give it tools to better monetize and monitor the commerce activities of its members. DeWolfe told the paper that if MySpace does allow peer-to-peer transactions, they will have to be “fun, safe and secure.” Source: CNN
This is an added dimension to MySpace that would if done right, help out many people to make money off their songs and videos in ways that YouTube and Facebook or others do not currently offer. It would also drive more bands and independent studios to their web site further increasing the value of the property. In many ways, this is one of the better MySpace deals that we have heard of, has a lot of potential, and depends on just how MySpace sets this one up.
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