I’ve been harboring a viewpoint for a while, and now it’s time for me to divulge it. MySpace wants to be a “portal”.

As TechCrunch reports, MySpace will be announcing a new casual games channel. This is hot on the heels of them announcing their MySpace TV co-production, Roommates.

This is starting to look like Yahoo, isn’t it? Yahoo!Games, Yahoo!TV, etc.

If you want to know the difference between MySpace and Facebook, the fundamental one is that Facebook does not have portal ambitions. That’s not necessarily a bad thing either.

But, if MySpace keeps this strategy (and their reach) up, and if they can remain relevant and successful, they have to be considered every bit as much of a portal as Yahoo!, AOL and MSN — albeit for a younger skewing demographic.

As with many portals, though, the success of its initiatives is dependent on its ability to drive traffic to those initiatives internally. External traffic visits are great, but most usage has to come from people that already use the portal. We’ve seen portal initiatives fail though, even with heavy promotion (i.e. many Yahoo! news initiatives).

So its obvious that MySpace is making that portal play. But their success will be dependent on their ability to deliver what their consumers want — not what MySpace can promote to them. Hopefully, this kind of diversification of services doesn’t dilute the core offering of connectivity and self-expression….

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