Dark Alley’s of MySpace

By Michael Gray
In Advertising, Case Study, Grayhat SEO, Ideas, SEO, Social Networks  

In part II we looked at legitimate Marketing Examples on MySpace however it’s hard to take a complete look at all that MySpace is without acknowledging that it does have a dark and seedy district. There are some adult areas with lots of nudity however as of this writing none of the pages linked to here will have full nudity on them. There will however be links to some casino gambling, risque content, and suggestive photographs. In fact many of the links on this page will have the nofollow tag and should be considered Not Safe For Work.

While many people take issue with adult and gambling related content, if you can set any hangups you may have aside you can usually see some very interesting and bleeding edge marketing tactics at work. In fact those two industries have probably done more to advance technological and multi media growth in the internet than anyone else.

Known for outlandish stunts like paying $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich with the Virgin Mary on it and paying a woman $10,000 to tattoo her forehead it’s no shock the the Golden Palace Casino is on MySpace. Comparing the Golden Palace page to the rest of MySpace they seem rather tame, and professionally done, interesting to note how on the ball they are here.

Looking through the “friends” of the Golden Palace you come across the NSFW adult film star Jenna Jameson. Lots of NSFW pictures with a reasonably well laid out page. They seem to want you to go to ClubJenna.com however I was hard pressed to find a direct link. A better execution is on the NSFW page of Mandy Lynn, which clicks over to a paid service offered by playboy. Mandy Lynn has over 100,000 “friends” and Jenna Jameson has over 300,000 “friends” so I think it’s safe to assume they have made a decent profit from MySpace.

Next let’s look at someone who’s used MySpace to bring themselves into the limelight, Tia Tequila. Tia is making a lot of friends on MySpace and using them to promote her appearances at clubs. She’s got a really good publicist who’s getting her some good interviews and air time on MSNBC, Extra TV, and MTV. She’s even parlayed the whole thing into a cover shoot for Stuff Magazine. There are hundreds and thousands of other people doing exactly what Tia is doing they just haven’t been as lucky and successful at it as she has.

I hope this MySpace series has been helpful to you. I’ve given you a brief overview and introduction on how MySpace works, how you can get started and few things you should be aware of of. We’ve looked at both the high points and the low points of MySpace and hopefully you’ve seen a few opportunities. If you’d like to discuss some SEO opportunities on MySpace check out the MySpace SEO group that was set up by IrishWonder and ‘hey thanks for the add’.

Related posts:

1. Lessons in Linkbait and Social Media One way to
2. Looking at Fake Social Media Profiles Somewhere