Rupert Murdoch loves MySpace, but is it paying off?

Doug McIntyre wrote this morning that News Corp (NYSE: NWS)'s MySpace.com will be challenging Facebook in the social networking space with its new open-source platform. This means anyone and everyone with programming and/or web knowledge will be able to wrap their hands around MySpace's hundred-million plus registered users and create applications and useful features that users of the social networking site will love and use -- and will keep them coming back more often for longer periods (known as "stickiness" in the web universe).

Although Rupert Murdoch is now touting the growth in MySpace since News Corp bought the web property two years ago, I still see no solid figures on how the property is being monetized and how profit growth is happening. Yes, Murdoch says that social networking has become "explosive" in the near past. That is very true, and it's something I noted in a post on Facebook yesterday.

MySpace and Facebook may be garnering a huge slice of eyeballs these days, but are they monetizing that traffic? What are page views and visitor counts if little to no 'valuable' revenue is being generated? Some would say all revenue is valuable, but I disagree. If irrelevant ads show up on web pages, they count as being viewed (an "impression"). Does the viewer do anything with this "impression?" Is this growth being measured?