Apparently, social networking sites are also making money. From the ZDnet blog of Larry Dignan (executive editor of ZDNet) and reported also by Marc Andreessen in his blog, some news from MySpace website:
News Corp. said its Fox Interactive unit, which largely consists of MySpace, turned a profit of $10 million on revenue of $550 million for the fiscal year ending June 30… News Corp. chief financial officer David DeVoe said the revenue figures exceeded the company’s internal benchmarks. News Corp. had projected MySpace revenue to top $500 million this fiscal year.
The results include revenue from MySpace’s deal with Google to monetize search results. DeVoe said that Fox Interactive is expected to benefit more from the Google deal in fiscal 2008. Officials said that Fox Interactive as a whole should be able to approach annual revenue of about $1 billion. This growth would come from the Google search deal, international growth on the Web and better monetization. News Corp. is also benefiting as advertisers flock to social sites at the expense of portals…
“It wasn’t so long ago–24 months–when many thought we were embarking on a fool’s errand (with MySpace),” said News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch.
He forecast that MySpace revenue alone will generate more than $800 million in revenue.