MySpace News to challenge Digg

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on March 12, 2007 at 12:30 PM

MySpace is readying to launch its own news service, in a move that would be representative of the gradual convergence of newspapers and social networking websites. Both are building on the strengths of the other, forming new hybrids of news and community aggregators.

Myspace’s service will enable members to post, rate and comment on news stories. MySpace bloggers will also be able to post their news stories.

The service will probably resemble US-based news aggregator Digg, which allows its readers to carry out the same operations. Some users are concerned about users’ ability to bury or censor stories by labeling them as spam.

There is little doubt newspapers and traditional media will closely follow the evolution of MySpace, which has captured over 100 million accounts since its creation (it is now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.).

It is also possible that MySpace News will include stories from Murdoch’s newspapers, such as The Sun, The Times and the New York Post.

MySpace News could be launched sometime between April and June.

Source: Media Guardian