IP Democracy: News Corp. Throws a Knuckleball at YouTube

With the iPhone frenzy in a temporary lull now that we know the device is all but a smash success, the big news today is News Corp.’s pending launch of a YouTube rival, MySpaceTV (www.myspacetv.com).

Starting tomorrow, MySpace’s video sharing section, which helped propel YouTube to its current heights, will become a newly refurbished destination that features user-generated videos in addition to professional content, which News Corp. will feature front and center as users arrive at the site. In fact, the MySpaceTV will become one main hub for the News Corp.-NBC-U online video joint venture (which still lacks a name.)

Om Malik calls this competitive gauntlet-throwing a classical example of the uncomfortable nature of Internet and media alliances these days. Once friends, now MySpace and YouTube are enemies. They’re frenemies.

I think he’s being too nice. With this move, News Corp. and Google, MySpace and YouTube, are now officially adversaries, competing head-to-head in the same sector. With YouTube inching toward social networking territory anyway, a rivalry between MySpace and YouTube might have been inevitable anyway.

It’s likely, however, that YouTube got caught off-guard by this knuckleball. None of the press reports have an adequate response by a Google rep to this development. I’d say that the “friend” part of the frenemy equation has been wiped out of the relationship between MySpace and YouTube.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on June 27, 2007 3:29 PM to IP Democracy