When myspace becomes his space

News from the world of the Web, where more than 50 million people belong to social community myspace.com: Be prepared to see even more of your online neighbors. Perhaps one of them will have a staple through her navel.

Playboy has announced that it is searching for females who are myspace.com denizens to appear in an upcoming "Women of myspace" pictorial. Playboy has done this thing often enough before that its editor can compare response in this search to prior "Women of" pictorials. A story in MediaPost tells about the latest success at finding models, presumably of legal age.

"This ranks up there with the best searches we've done," said Editor John Thomas. "We'll probably shoot more than we usually do. We've been overwhelmed with the number and quality of submissions that we've gotten." He estimated that the site could have up to 30 different young women in the feature.

Face it, people want to be noticed and get connected. That's a primary attraction for myspace, although MediaPost notes a story about a 14 year old in New Jersey who was allegedly murdered by a man in his 20s she'd met through myspace.com.

That dangerous outcome would probably make myspace no different, really, than McDonalds, the Big 12 Conference, Baylor University — all places where murder has taken place. Oh, and all subjects of previous Playboy "Women of" pictorials.

It's not that much of a challenge to find posing in myspace, anyway.

With 50 million members, though, some of it is bound to be unclothed. What's attracting Playboy is the same thing luring any other media baron: A link to the glorious 14-34 demographic, the heartland of places like myspace.

Of course, these pictures won't be of any hard-bodied men on myspace. This has the writers on Feministing not exactly outraged, but wondering if they could be co-opted by Playboy in the future on an unauthorized pictorial. Myspace, while taking Playboy ads, isn't exactly cooperating with the magazine on the project.

Wired tells us in a recent issue that hard-core Web addicts call the outside world, where people live, "the meatspace." Playboy's going to do its best to blur that distinction a little more with its pictorial.

Update, Feb. 22

News Corp., makers of your friendly Fox News network, said in a Wall Street Journal article that it's trying to protect myspace users. But hey, who knows about safety better than Fox News, the network usually trying to scare the bejesus out of us?

From the Journal:

[Myspace] also is considering limiting access to certain groups, such as "swingers," to those over 18; blocking search terms that predators could use to locate kids; and encouraging users between 14 and 16 to make their profiles "private," meaning they can only be viewed by people they already know.

"We're going to take some pretty dramatic steps to provide industry-leading safety," says Ross Levinsohn, president of News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media unit, which includes MySpace.

It is a delicate operation for News Corp. because the media group wants to retain MySpace's cool factor.