I guess MySpace has entered the third stage of fame:
- Who's X?
- Get me X!
- Get me someone like X!
- Get me a young X!
- Who's X?
Of course you understand (if you read our previous item) what is wrong with this picture. "I want to be the MySpace of (insert niche here)" makes little sense when you don't know if MySpace itself is either a profit center or a money pit.
But don't let that stop anyone. After all, remember how Web 1.0 (let's build a news site) grabbed Lou Dobbs? (Mexicans in space! Holy illegal aliens!)
Long story gets shorter. Joe Lockhart (former Clinton press secretary), Matthew Dowd, (former chief strategist for Bush in 2004) and Ron Fournier (former writer for the Associated Press) have gotten some VCs interested in having them create (wait for it) a MySpace for Politics.
It's called Hotsoup. (Hence the visit from the Soup Nazi.)
Let me ask just a few questions:
- Why should people go to you? Instead of, say, DailyKos or RedState?
- Where's the business model?
This last one is most important. I get that they think having people create their own pages and link to all their stuff on politics (along with their pictures) might be cool. Personally, I dont think so. (I'm doing fine here.)
But it's the last question that they can't answer. I happen to have an answer, but I'm not going to share it. Suffice to say that advertising isn't going to cut it, and neither will CafePress. That barely keeps top bloggers like Atrios in beer-and-skittles -- Tom Tomorrow is constantly complaining about his poverty, and he's got talent.
But I do hope these guys enjoy their VC money. I hope they know enough to stick some of it in their personal bank accounts, somewhere, before running off onto cyberspace. Because it's probably the last time we're going to see them.
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