Since MySpace has focused its attention on the music world in recent years, MySpace TV’s initial content will be center heavily on music. As the service expands, movies and TV programming – including news, sports, and more – will be included. MySpace TV is intended to work both with broadcast content and on-demand streaming content. Users will be able to invite friends to view with them and to chat about what they’re watching. There will also be MySpace TV apps for smartphone and tablet platforms.

MySpace TV is currently in laptop-based invitation-only closed beta, but is expected to launch in the first half of 2012. It will be available to owners of Panasonic TVs equipped with the VIERA Connect system. People who want into the beta can request an invite from MySpace.

[Source: Panasonic Press Release]

Total user-generated videos published in 2007 reached an estimated 1.2 million, along with 26.5 million related comments.

Accustream found that MySpace TV’s library averaged 36.9 comments per video in 2007, while Metacafe videos received an average of 32.3, followed by YouTube at 25.4.

MySpace TV video received more comments than those on the other sites because of a focus on semi-professional and professional content.

Accustream said that comments could be a useful tool for marketers. "User comments are an indication of content engagement intent and underlying motivation," said Paul A. Palumbo, the company’s research director.

"Comments reflect interactive activity meaningful to brands, publishers and advertisers, particularly as a community’s conversation about video becomes intrinsic to CPM value. Video is visual and visceral," Palumbo said.
 

MySpace TV Set To Launch

“On Thursday, MySpace plans to rename and refurbish the video-sharing service on its popular social network,” reports Brad Stone for The New York Times.  “The new service . . . will be set up as an independent Web site (www.myspacetv.com) that people can visit to share and watch video, even if they have not signed up for MySpace.  The site will also offer some new ways for members of MySpace, which attracts 110 million users a month, to more easily integrate the videos they create and watch into their personal profiles.”

We saw a clue to this development with the introduction of “minisodes” on MySpace; minisodes, as conceived by MySpace, Sony, and Honda, were shortened versions of classic TV shows.  MySpace TV will also focus on clips that are more professional in nature.  “When you go to MySpace video now, what you see is far less appealing to the eye than what you get from other video sites,” admitted Jeff Berman, a MySpace executive, to Stone.

But it remains to be seen just what sort of content MySpace TV will be able to attract.  Users often don’t respond well to restrictions, and according to the NYT article, “MySpace expects that part of the appeal of MySpace TV to studios and professional videomakers will be its aggressiveness in protecting intellectual property.  The company was among the first major video sites to use filtering software, which checks uploaded videos to determine if they are protected by copyright.”

Liz Gannes of NewTeeVee had another couple things to say about (and/or against) MySpace TV.  “We had pointed out in the past that MySpace Vids seemed to be losing ground to YouTube,” she writes.  “MySpace parent News Corp is one of the founders of a joint-venture video site supposed to launch this fall, the so-called ‘NewCo.’  It’s telling that MySpace TV is not more closely integrated with that project.”