We've seen MySpace.com serve as a launching pad for everything from unsigned bands to budding denim designers to angst-saddled teens. Now the site is being used as a platform to deliver content to a trendy British fashion and pop culture magazine.
Reports from the United Kingdom find Marmalade magazine sending out an open call for content to flesh out its March issue, cover to cover. The monthly read, with an estimated 30,000 subscribers, is accepting submissions through its MySpace page and scouring through the site to recruit talent.
Marmalade is throwing a pretty wide net in its call for "bands, artists, performers, designers, writers, photographers, directors, and scenes to shout about" to help fill the upcoming issue. This isn't just an excuse to coast at the expense of neophytes looking to get noticed and published. Accepted submissions will get paid at standard rates.
It's another feather in the cap of News Corp.'s (NYSE:NWS) popular social-networking site. It also dovetails nicely with Time Warner's (NYSE:TWX) Time magazine's decision to make you -- yes, you -- its Person of the Year for 2006.
Yes, you do matter. The whole Web 2.0 movement revolves around user-created content, with sites like MySpace and Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) YouTube growing in stature without much in terms of editorial content or direction. The democratization of the Web is already an old story; now new media is going old-school by democratizing the print medium, too.
What's next, Mr. Internet? Hieroglyphics?
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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz knows that you can't ignore sleeping giants, much less wide-awake ones such as YouTube and MySpace. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.
