Just read this article on the Wall Street Journal Online about companies paying for profiles on MySpace. The story goes like this.

Companies want to create a higher profile for a particular product or service, like a movie, but they can’t promote their goods via a MySpace profile without permission. If you’re willing to pay you get permission to create a profile with all kinds of extra features not afforded to regular profiles. As part of this deal you’re given priority placement for the link to your profile, probably on the front page at times. I see a problem with this approach. The problem is that users cannot always discern when a profile is a paid advertisement or just a profile.

For example, movie companies are paying to have profiles posted for fictional characters from movies complete with backstories and all the normal profile items on MySpace. People start adding these profiles to their friend list and they began to get seeded throughout the network. This is what the marketers of these goods and services want. But is this an ethical approach to using social media for marketing purposes?

This is, in effect, product placement social network style. The product happens to appear in a place where many people will see it in exchange for compensation to the producer of the work. In this case MySpace is the ultimate producer of the social network.

At this point in time many people realize that the products you see in movies and television shows have been placed their in exchange for a fee. Heck, the TV show The Apprentice is one show that is entirely driven by product placement. Do people, especially young people, realize that some of the profiles that they are seeing on MySpace are actually paid advertisements? Some might know but most probably don’t know. This is a very gray area of marketing ethics in my opinion.

From the perspective of MySpace, this represents a very important cash cow for their business. In conducting this type of business they are also removing profiles of individuals or businesses that seek to market their products or services. The message from MySpace is simple. If you’re a business that wants to market via MySpace then you must pay to play in their sandbox.

Take this as a note of caution if your in a business that plans to promote your product or service via MySpace. You may just get your hand slapped by the owners of the site. And if you don’t obey warnings your profile may be banned altogether. The obvious exception to this rule applies to musicians who are free to promote their music and gigs on MySpace. At the same time musicians drive a huge amount of traffic to the site and are the primary reason that MySpace is dominant in the social networking space.

So the playing field is not level. Should it be? If your company has the money you can ask permission. If MySpace likes you then you’re in. If they don’t you’re left to go elsewhere. Don’t worry, there are other choices.

You can create image profiles on Flickr and Slide. You can maintain lists of bookmarks on Del.icio.us and Blinklist. You can maintain a blog and tag your posts so they are indexed by Technorati. You can distribute viral videos on Google Video and YouTube. You can even create and manage your own community using open source software like Drupal.

The message here is simple. If you are in business and your social media marketing plan includes the use of MySpace then you may need to consider other avenues. And there are plenty of other avenues as mentioned above. If you are an individual user who just happens to be cruising MySpace, the profile you are viewing may just be an ad in disguise.

[tags]Social Media, MySpace, Marketing, Social Marketing, Social Networking[/tags]