MySpace.com seems to be the hottest ticket around these days for Internet eyeballs. Specifically, the highly-touted younger eyeballs that many advertisers love to court. There are reports that Google missed the boat on purchasing MySpace.com earlier (according to this story), and shortly thereafter Rupert Murdoch beat Viacom to land the immensely-popular social networking site for $580 million. That gives News. Corp an instant presence in the online world, although it's been very careful about not transplanting its own brand and identity to MySpace.com. Even the founders are still around and are running the site and operations just like before. Smart move, Rupert.

With the just-announced partnership with Google, MySpace.com will now be replacing its generic search engine with Google search, which will most likely be a huge winner for both. Google gets its advertiser's ads in front of billions of page views, and MySpace.com gets a highly-relevant search function that will connect its customers with information just like its customers do now -- they connect themselves to one another.

Does Yahoo! fit into all this? It could have. The world's largest Internet portal lost out on its bid to supply search services to MySpace.com to rival Google. Although that was a blow to Yahoo!, it was by no means a death sentence to the company. Yahoo! continues to be the leader for Internet-focused eyeballs, garnering more visits than any other web property around. It just won't lose customers like dust in the wind, regardless of the Google/MySpace.com relationship. Sure, MySpace.com surpassed Yahoo! Mail as the most heavily-visited web destination last month (according to Hitwise). That's a problem that Yahoo! should be attacking, but it's far from a death sentence. Yahoo's varying services for customers encompass so many different types of content it'll be just fine -- if it keeps innovating to stay where it is.

Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.

This was a good one after reading about it -- Wal-Mart's new MySpace-ish website for the totally uncool teenager at its "School Your Way" website -- and its just about as far-fetched and kitschy as I have seen in some time. What are they trying to do here -- re-invent the wheel in the worst possible way? This is most likely a marketing experiment, but you never know how things like this will turn out -- perhaps everyone will migrate from MySpace over to Wal-Mart. Not.

Teenagers and entry-college people are generally the most faddish and entranced by fashion and trends, and it is hard to say if this marketing demographic will gravitate towards Wal-Mart as a fashionable trendsetter. Wal-Mart vs. Abercrombie? That's a rather odd comparison to visualize, yet that is exactly what Wal-Mart is trying to accomplish here from my perspective. The ad agency that created the campaign, GSD&M of Austin, Texas, must have some interesting research to back up up what they created.

With so many limitations and disclaimers on what visitors can do at the Wal-Mart "School Your Way" website -- no email interchange and a laundry list of what you "can't do" -- will this marketing junket even take off from the launch pad? With this stab at creating a semi-edgy slant of content to appeal to a certain purchasing set, some seem unimpressed by the display. Amy Kandel, 14, of Columbus, Ohio -- "Some of the kids looked like they were trying to be supercool, but they weren't at all, and they were just being kind of weird," and "Are these real kids?" Pete Hughes, 18, said this: "It just seemed kind of corny to me."

Was Rupert Murdoch placing a large bet when he decided to purchase MySpace.com for $580 million? Sure he was -- but the media baron knew that having an outlet for online advertising and eyeballs was going to be a big business. Yes, the MySpace.com contingent is nothing short of amazing. So amazing, in fact, that MySpace.com became the No. 1 leading web destination in the U.S. just recently, passing such Internet stalwarts like Google and Yahoo!

Keep in mind that MySpace.com is frequented by kids and teens more than anyone -- and Google and Yahoo! are frequented by just about anyone with a web connection. That fact speaks to the heart of the "MySpace generation" -- those who are spending much (if not most) of their leisure and social time online. Are malls and other physical hangouts on the decline? Hard to say -- but MySpace.com and text messaging are changing the social strata of today's kids.

As much as 4.5% of all web visitor traffic was sent to MySpace.com last week, making the social portal the most popular web-based destination in the U.S. Forget all those business trips being booked on Priceline or Hotwire, or all the email being sent at Yahoo! Mail. MySpace.com trumped them all.

With Google receiving so much press lately with the flood of product releases it's had, can it learn from MySpace? It can -- and that lesson is: make a compelling and personalized portal and people will show up. The more customized a web destination is, the more people feel in-tune with what's there instead of a cold, non-personal visit. Information by itself is good, but personal relationships can sometimes be better.

With MySpace.com being all the rage these days (on sitcoms, even), it's looking for a search partner to join in in bringing advertising to the site in ways that both MySpace and the chosen partner can make a nice revenue stream. Google and Microsoft are, at this time, the apparent front-runners to being the default search partner for MySpace? Who will win out? A more important second question -- will the target demographic and socio-economic class that predominantly uses MySpace respond to ads on that social network like the standard web search user?

There's been talk that advertising on MySpace -- in any form -- will not nearly be as lucrative as search-based advertising is on the general internet. The age group that uses MySpace (by and large) are prime folks to market to -- that's for sure -- but they can also be the most fickle with annoying ads (and the most resourceful at not even responding to them and blocking them). Google, which has had enormous success with its relevant and unobtrusive text-based ads, would be the optimal choice if the advertising displayed at MySpace follows along the already-established guidelines of the Google universe.

With the potentially-lucrative ad income MySpace and the chosen search partner will share, there are definite reasons for having your ads showing up on the MySpace network (for sheer visitor numbers alone). But, are you listening, Google and/or Microsoft? To be successful, you must ensure the actual way that ads are displayed along with the relevancy is suited for the specific audience. This is something Google has the upper hand in (my guess) at this time.

Bambi Francisco, a columnist at MarketWatch, has a very interesting piece this week: MySpace-engine.

Despite being the second most trafficked site on the Web, MySpace is still a teenager when it comes to monetization. True, generating $200 million in revenues is no small feat (especially for a company less than three years old). Then again, companies like Google and Yahoo! are sucking-up much of the enormous amounts spent for online advertising.

So, why shouldn't MySpace jump into the search game? One idea would be to purchase a company like LookSmart (Nasdaq: LOOK). The company has made a comeback – and more importantly, has the necessary search infrastructure (which took hundreds of millions to develop over the years). And the market cap is dirt cheap: $95 million. In fact, the company has $44 million in cash and liquid securities.

According to Francisco, about 8.2% of Google's traffic comes from tools on MySpace.com. Interestingly enough, it is the biggest source of traffic for Google. So, it looks like a no brainer for MySpace to have its own search engine.

Actually, this morning, I talked with the CEO of a company called Foldera. It's a Web 2.0 collaborative tool focused on small to medium-sized businesses. His product also pushes lots of traffic to Google. "Why not try to monetize this large amount of corporate traffic?" he told me.

Yes, many online communities are asking themselves this question. And, with the huge amounts of money at stake in the online advertising market, Google will need to deal with fierce competition on all fronts – not just from Yahoo and MSN.