Should eBay have partnered with MySpace?

Why didn't eBay partner with MySpace? Well, I'm not sure. It could have been a combination of reasons. One reason could be that eBay didn't feel there would be any synergies from such a move. Another reason could be that paying more than $900 million for MySpace partnership could have rocked the share price further, especially
after investors accused eBay for overpaying for Skype and in light of the current sentiment.

However, only a day before the announcement that Google and MySpace partnered, auctionbytes.com had an article about the growing number of eBay sellers that are creating MySpace spaces in which they market their products and stores. This strategy actually translates into increased traffic to their eBay store, better placement of their products on searches, and even better sales as the two examples cited demonstrate.

Also, MySpace, as you recall, was hailed the single most visited U.S. site last month, topping Google and Yahoo! Mail. Partnering with MySpace when eBay is trying to gain exposure for its own contextual ad program would have achieved just that.

So should eBay have taken advantage of this information and leveraged it with another acquisition/partnership regardless of sentiment? I guess there's no easy way to answer that and only time will tell.