MySpace Might Have Friends, but It Wants Ad Money

Monetizing social networking Web sites is proving to be an arduous road and ad revenues have not come in as quickly as planned

New York Times, June 16, 2008 — When the News Corporation added MySpace to its portfolio nearly three years ago, it expected that if its base of 16 million users kept growing — and each user kept adding friends, sharing photos and swapping flirty messages — the advertising dollars would roll in.

The social networking site has grown — to 118 million worldwide users — and the flirtations have not stopped. But the cash is not coming in as quickly as the company had hoped.