When Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought MySpace, the social-networking Web site, in July, some of its users gloomily predicted that the site would be altered to suit the company's corporate interests.
Proof for many of those people came earlier this month, when MySpace users began to notice that any references to YouTube, a video-sharing site and a competitor, were erased or blocked from appearing on My-Space. Some MySpace users also reported that when they tried to download videos from YouTube, a patch of white space appeared instead.
Murdoch’s business model has always been to control distribution and constrain customers to buy what he wants to sell, rather that supply what customers want to buy. I see no evidence that he understands that the Internet is not susceptible to this approach as long as it remains open.
Edit-
YouTube blog (which hasn't worked out permalinks) reports that it was all a misunderstanding.
1 comment:
Abbe - thank you for your kind words.
Dana - It doesn't seem very clueful, but Murdoch seems to go for control the way a moth is drawn to the flame.
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