Why can't MTV strike gold online? You'd think the music network would have been a huge success by now, bigger than MySpace and Facebook combined. The problem is that parent Viacom keeps investing in one stupid idea after another and slapping the MTV brand on, hoping that the association alone will bring it those fresh-faced Web users that advertisers crave.
Case in point: A new social networking site called Flux, which will allow MTV.com users to set up Web pages and add video, blogs, pictures of friends and other items. Flux will partner with other Web sites so that users can take content from those sites and add it to their own pages.
Viacom execs tell Fortune that Flux isn't a response to MySpace, which was bought up by News Corp. two years ago. Yeah, and those execs will insist that MTV still plays music videos, too.
This is all about MySpace - or, rather, stealing some of those precious ad dollars from the social networking giant. But to trot out yet another social network - one whose only value seems to be that you can legitimately take videos and other content for your own site -- is a desperate move by Viacom
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