MySpace To Launch Minisodes and Independent Video Website

Posted on June 27, 2007

MySpace has partnered with Sony Pictures Television for a new video service called the Minisode Network. Oddly the new site will contain condensed versions of old hit shows like Charlie's Angels. CNET's Crave blogs that MySpacers will be able to embed the minisodes which are each about 3 to 5 minutes in length.

You can think of it as TV on Cliff's Notes. Each 'minisode' is three to five minutes long, but Sony and MySpace have assured skeptical viewers that the story arc of the original TV episode remains intact.
On the Minisode Network, you can now watch three shaved-down episodes from a total of 15 TV shows. Many of them, like Starsky & Hutch and Charlie's Angels, predate the average young MySpace user, but a few, like Dilbert, are a bit newer. According to a release from MySpace, new ones will be added each week and more than 500 total will be online by the end of 2007. It's not clear whether this means that new shows will be added as well or if the 'minisodes' will remain restricted to the current 15.

The bigger news is that MySpace will be launching MySpace TV on Thursday. MySpace TV will be independent of MySpace.com and people will not need to be logged into MySpace to view the videos. It is direct competition for YouTube. You can read more about MySpace TV here on Search Engine Land and here on the New York Times. You can expect to see some of the minisodes of old shows on MySpace TV when it launches.

Update 6-28-07: MySpace TV, "a place for videos," is live. It looks a lot like YouTube especially when Video Charts are viewed. MySpace will have to work very hard to challenge YouTube which Hitwise says has 50% more traffic than all the other video websites combined.